A Crack in the Firmament
by BlackIceWitch
Summary: 7th story in Ramble On series. 2009-2010. It's been a hellish few months. Two of the Horsemen have been incapacitated. Two remain at large. When Ellie shows up unexpectedly, Dean can hardly believe it, finding himself struggling with feelings that have no place in a hunter's life, a renewal of hope and a promise for the future. No slash, no spoilers. Reviews appreciated.
1. Chapter 1 Unexpected

**Chapter 1 Unexpected**

* * *

><p><em><strong>February 2010. Nebraska.<strong>_

Dean stared moodily into the glass of whiskey on the table in front of him. He didn't really want to be here, but he'd thought Sam would object if he sat in the room and drank without saying a word. Or would want him to talk about it. Share his feelings. Something.

At least here, no one cared.

It was just a small neighbourhood place. The short polished bar had a couple of regulars, drinking beers and watching a game on the television set screwed high on the wall in the corner. A dozen small tables were scattered around the rest of the long, narrow room. The walls were dark, panelled in plywood and stained an unlikely shade of reddish-brown. In the corner, a small jukebox, under strict control of the bartender, played nothing but blues and old folk ballads. It was enough to bring anyone down after a few of them. It certainly kept the bar's sparse clientele from speaking.

He was hunched over a small table in the corner of the room, where a burned out or missing bulb in the closest down light had made the corner darker than the rest of the place. It suited his mood.

Ever since Carthage, he'd been running on empty. And things had gotten worse since Carthage. A lot worse. Most of the time, when he was busy, or driving, he didn't notice it so much. But the evenings were killers. He couldn't think of anything but the failures. His failures.

_Ellen and Jo. Sam, screaming in the panic room_. That'd taken four days and he'd made himself stand there and listen, nearly the whole time. No help had come in response to the soul-shredding plea he'd sent out. When Sam'd staggered out, on the fourth day, he'd been braced for his brother's recriminations, but Sam'd just slept for two days and hadn't said a word about it since.

_Michael. Anna. His parents_. Nothing he'd done or said had helped. Bloodlines, Michael had said, all the way back to Cain and Abel. He stared at the whiskey in his glass, tilting it this way and that. More angel bullshit. Cas'd told Bobby and Bobby'd finally admitted that what Ellie had found out, months and months before, was true. All true. The bloodlines of fallen angels had been mixed and stirred to make keys and vessels. Just two.

The thought of her brought a dull ache and he tossed back the rest of the whiskey, slamming the glass on the table top and rubbing both hands over his face as he buried those thoughts again.

_Bobby's dead wife and a whole town filled with zombies_. _Death_. Not the peace he wanted, six foot under and left alone, but a carny trip to Heaven and memories of that place that he wished he didn't have. Bitterness at what the gardener had told them rose up through their spectres. _Not his problem_, Joshua had said.

* * *

><p>Ellie parked the truck in the parking lot at the back of the hotel and turned off the engine.<p>

_He'll be at the bar, Sam'd said, his expression a mix of resignation and frustration, with what she'd thought was anger, underlying both._

_What happened? she'd asked him, and he'd shaken his head, turning away and dropping into the chair at the table with hunched up shoulders. Too much, that closed-in posture had told her._

_Are you alright, Sam? _

_He'd looked up then, something, some fleeting feeling spasming in his face and then he'd nodded, sucking in a deep breath and making a vague gesture around the room. _

_Yeah, I'm okay, he'd said and his gaze had slid away from her again. It's been – it's been a hard few months._

For everyone, she thought, pulling the keys out of the ignition and opening the car door.

Carrying her backpack and a long canvas duffel up the stairs to the small suite the desk clerk had given her, she wondered if it was such a good idea to go and find Dean now. For the last five months, it'd been all she'd thought of … surviving. Getting back. Seeing him again. But what she wanted wasn't necessarily going to be the same for him, and, if she was honest with herself, she wasn't sure he'd welcome the intrusion now. Bobby had been angry when she'd spoken to him. Angry at the things that'd happened in the last few months. Sam too, she thought, unlocking the door and flipping on the lights, her gaze moving absently around the main room and seeing the double glass doors to the right as she pushed the door shut behind her.

Ellen and Jo had been killed in the attempt to kill Lucifer. They'd managed to get the Colt back, courtesy of a demon who'd insisted that at this particular point in time, their goals were aligned, but it hadn't killed the devil. Had never been able to, Bobby'd told her sourly.

She didn't find that surprising. Lucifer was an angel, not a demon. There were things that could kill him. Not many, she knew, but some. A human-made gun, even with extraordinary supernatural power, wouldn't be among them.

The old hunter had been irritatingly vague on what else had been going on. Carrying her bags to the bedroom through the glass doors, she dumped the duffel at the end of the bed and the backpack on the armchair next to the window and turned for the bathroom, fingers pulling the hairband from the end of the long braid.

Lucifer had summoned Death, and released the Horseman. He'd passed on a message at the same time, via Bobby's dead wife, Karen, not to help the Winchesters with their quest to destroy him.

Turning on the bathroom light and stripping off her travel-grimed clothes, Ellie wondered why Lucifer would try to threaten an old man, even a hunter with Bobby's reputation. Surely the devil wasn't worried about them or what they might be able to do? He held the powers of Hell, the powers of an angel …

_The righteous man who begins it is the only one who can finish it_ … the prophecy's words slid in a whisper through her mind and she paused, her hands on the taps. Was Lucifer taking the prophecy more seriously now?

Whether he was or wasn't, she realised, twisting the taps on, he should've been. The Winchesters were changing things, faster and most profoundly than anyone could've foreseen.

Stepping under the steaming water, she loosened her hair and picked up the shampoo bottle, lathering distractedly as she methodically reviewed everything she knew about the end of days omens and where Dean had already changed the angel's path.

There was no reason for the devil to be afraid, she thought, detangling the long strands with her fingers. But he _was_ afraid – or at the very least, much more cautious about the prospects of his success. Bobby had said that in addition to War being defeated, Dean and Sam had destroyed Famine. That was two Horsemen who would not go about the world. And what the hell did that mean? For the countdown? For the world?

She turned off the shower and reached for a towel, drying off quickly and stepping out onto the mat.

How could Dean – or either or both of them, for that matter – defeat an archangel who commanded Hell? Holy oil would trap Lucifer, as surely as it would trap any angel. Would an angel's sword be able to kill him, she wondered? Or only Michael's sword? Wielded by Michael in his vessel?

The sight of her face, reflected in the mirror over the sink and starkly unadorned under the uncompromisingly harsh bathroom light, caught her attention as she picked up the comb and ran it through her hair. The last few months had left their scars. One red line ran from her brow into her hairline. Three knotted and still-red lines marred her stomach, from ribs to hip bone. She was still too thin, she decided critically, seeing the shadows under her cheekbones and jaw.

Was it a good idea to go and see him now? She didn't know, turning away from the mirror and walking out into the bedroom to get clean clothes from her duffel. She didn't want to make anything harder for him, or even for herself.

Underwear, jeans, tee shirt, button-through shirt. Ellie dressed without looking at what she was putting on, wondering if there was a single good justification for doing what she was about to do. The attitudes of the hunters she'd come across in the last two weeks came back to her. The Winchester name had been bandied around a lot. Not always admiringly.

_I'll just see how he is_, she decided finally, pulling on her socks and boots. _If it gets complicated, I'll leave_. Her fingers deftly separated and braided her almost-dry hair into the familiar long plait. She was aware that she couldn't quite admit to the fact that she needed to see him, needed to see him alive.

* * *

><p>The clerk at the desk gave her directions to the town's single bar, two and a half blocks away on the Main Street and Ellie walked down to it, stopping in the doorway to scan the room. In the background, the jukebox was droning out a funereal dirge that was vaguely familiar, and for a moment, Ellie wondered if he'd gone further, to sit and drink in a bar with a more cheerful outlook. Then she saw him, hunched over the table in the darkest corner of the room, the closest downlight picking out the tips of gold against the short dark cut, his head bowed over his glass.<p>

"Dean."

* * *

><p>Dean looked up and felt the air in his lungs evaporate, his pulse shudder to a stop and the chaos of thought that'd filled his head two seconds earlier wiped away completely. Ellie stood there, a couple of feet in front of his table, her hair blazing under the small recessed ceiling light.<p>

For an endlessly long moment he couldn't say a word, aware that his mouth was open, that he wasn't a hundred percent sure if he was seeing things. He saw her expression soften a little, and it was the abrupt realisation that the compassion he could see in her eyes was for him that broke him free of the shock.

"Sorry, I would've called first, but I've been driving pretty much non-stop for the last couple of days," she said.

"Wha-how – uh, how'd you find me?" It was the least important thing he wanted to know, but the only thing that came out. She was here. Standing right here. As if nothing'd happened. As if –

"Okay if I join you?" She looked down at the second chair at his table and he nodded numbly.

Watching her as she pulled out the chair, dumping the large leather backpack on the floor beside her, he was aware that he had a lot of questions for her, but he couldn't think of any of them right now. There was a new scar that ran from her left eyebrow over the ridge of her temple and into her hairline, he noticed, brows twitching together. Other than that, she looked the same, copper-red hair in a loose single plait, her skin stretched a little more tautly over the bones of her face, as if she'd lost some weight. When he'd looked up, seen her suddenly there, it had felt, for a second, as if he'd seen her only yesterday and all the things that had happened during the intervening time had been wiped away. Now, he felt the weight of the last few months descend again. She'd been gone for seven months, for long enough that he'd been afraid that she'd died.

She turned and nodded to the bartender, holding up two fingers and Dean saw the man grab the bottle and pour the drinks with a flash of surprise, tinged with annoyance. He'd had to go over to the bar to get a fresh drink.

"Sam told me you'd be here," she answered his question, folding her arms on the table in front of her, her tilted a little to one side as she studied him. "And Bobby told me where to find Sam. I heard you tried to kill Lucifer."

He blinked, disoriented at the change in topic. The last thing he wanted to talk about was the goddamned devil, but that was overridden by the fact that she knew he'd tried. How many others knew that? Was it common knowledge?

"Yeah, how did you know that?" he asked, his voice dropping as the bartender approached the table, their drinks on a tray. Ellie gave the man a dazzling smile and coaxed a return smile from him. After listening to Leonard Cohen for the last god knows how many hours, Dean thought distractedly that was an achievement.

Ellie picked up her glass, swallowing a mouthful before she answered.

"I went to see Bobby. He's the only person I can trust to tell me the truth about you two now." She looked at him over her glass, her expression sobering. "There's a lot of misinformation circulating about you – and Sam."

Another irrational spurt of anger overrode her last few words. She'd called _Bobby_, he thought. Not _him_. Not even Sam. Hadn't thought that he might've been worried about her. Might've needed to know she was alright. The accusation rose up his throat and he clamped his teeth together, not wanting to let it out. She knew too much about him already and he knew she'd see it, the reason for his anger, if he let it out.

"You know Ellen and Jo are gone?" Looking down at the table, he felt himself shrivel up inside, hating the way that had come out. Casually. As if he'd had nothing to do with it.

She nodded. "I'm sorry, Dean."

The depth of compassion in her voice made him shake his head, trying to brush it off. He didn't want to talk about the failed attempt to ice the devil, he realised. He wanted – he didn't know what he wanted, exactly, but it wasn't to talk about him – or Sam – or the things that had happened since she'd disappeared.

"Where – where the hell you been, Ellie? We thought you were dead."

Grimacing inwardly as he heard an edge of anger in the words, he was relieved when she didn't seem to notice.

"Well, you were almost right," she said, her voice light as she looked away. "It's, uh, a long story. Not a very interesting one."

"What happened?" He tapped his own temple then looked pointedly at the scar on hers.

"Alaskan job. Got a bit out of hand for awhile." She sipped at her whiskey, then lifted her gaze to look at him curiously. "What about you? You and Sam hunting together again?"

"Yeah. Turned out the Apocalypse was too big for me to handle alone." He shrugged, clearing his throat. "You were gone for a while."

Ellie nodded as her gaze slid away again. "It was a mess, took me a while to get back."

He wanted to ask what'd happened, but something in her expression stopped him. It might've been the truth, he thought. But it wasn't the whole truth. And she didn't want to talk about it.

There was a part of him that did want to tell her everything, he realised, keeping his gaze on his glass. Everything that'd gone down since she'd walked out of that crappy hotel room in Manhattan. He thought of Famine and the Horseman's words echoed in his mind.

"You don't look happy any more, Dean."

The memory of their last conversation came back clearly and he looked across the table at her, a flush of disbelief and a residual anger and a sense of longing he couldn't understand filling him. She wasn't the only person he could talk to, he reminded himself impatiently. But, the thought intruded a moment later, she was the only one he _wanted_ to talk to, the only one he thought was safe enough. Sitting there, on the other side of the small, round table, she was close enough to touch, real and alive, and he closed his fingers hard around his glass, to keep from reaching out.

"No, can't say that I am," he agreed.

"What happened?" she asked, leaning a little closer. He looked up, his eyes meeting hers. She didn't ask questions to keep the conversation going. The concern he could see was genuine, and something inside him unwound, very slightly.

"I missed you."

Dean's gaze dropped instantly, brows drawing together slightly as he stared at the table top. He hadn't meant to say that. He had, missed her, but he'd meant to say something funny, something to brush off her concern, something snarky to get the conversation back to where he could feel comfortable instead of feeling like he was sitting there with no armour, no walls. What the hell was he was doing, he wondered, flicking a fast glance at her.

She was looking at him, her face expressionless, and their eyes met briefly. Then she looked away, her gaze scanning the room as if the break in the conversation was just that – a break. Nothing important to say. Or answer.

Studying the half-empty glass in his hand fixedly, Dean's pulse stuttered for a second. The hell did that mean? Did it mean she hadn't missed him? Hadn't spared a thought for him in the time she'd been gone? He'd thought about her. He hadn't been able to stop thinking about her. More and more in the last few weeks, as the failures started to pile up thick and fast. He'd dreamt about her and told himself she couldn't be dead.

He closed his eyes, finishing the whiskey in his glass.

"I'm not sure if it's news, but a lot of hunters are talking about you and Sam. There are some vicious rumours going around," she said, a moment later and he swallowed the raw feeling of disappointment, pretending not to even feel it as he kept his gaze on his empty glass.

Wasn't the first time he'd misjudged someone's interest, he told himself. It didn't happen much but it probably wouldn't be the last time either.

With a casual shrug, he said, "Yeah, we ran into a couple."

Walt and Roy were living on borrowed time. The edge to his voice had deepened, and this time, he realised she had noticed.

"You don't seem all that worried about it."

"Yeah, well, there's a few things higher on our To Do list," Dean told her. His fourth double was finally starting to have some impact, and he thought that just one more and he really wouldn't care.

"Lucifer raised the Fourth Horseman at Carthage?"

"Yeah. Death." His eyes narrowed slightly as he looked at her. "Bobby tell you about his wife?"

She nodded, seeming to relax a little more as she met his gaze. Probably because it was a helluva lot less embarrassing talking about the end of the world than his blurted out and unreturned feelings, he decided.

"It struck me as strange that Lucifer would be worried about whatever help Bobby could give you."

He bristled a little. "Bobby's a –"

"I don't mean that," Ellie cut him off. "He's human. You're human. As contests go, the odds are high on Lucifer's side."

She had a point, Dean thought, glancing at her again. "I don't know."

"You took out two of the Horsemen," Ellie said.

"The hell, Ellie," he burst out, scowling. "Bobby just blow his wad whenever you ask him anything?"

Her brows rose a little. "Is it a state secret?"

"No," he admitted. "But – how is it you always know everything that's happened to us and we don't know –"

He cut himself off, turning his head to glare at the bartender. The two glasses were on a tray and the man looked blandly back at him as he picked it up and began to walk slowly to the end of the bar.

"Anything you want to know, just ask," Ellie said.

_Just _ask, he thought derisively. Like he could do that.

"What d'you know about the Horsemen?"

"They're seals in the countdown to the final battle," she said. "Each one is released and the faithful are protected and the sinners are tortured. That's the take in Revelations, but it's not really what's going on now."

"And what's that?"

"Lucifer wants to get rid of as much of humankind as he can before he faces Michael, I would guess," she told him. "But without the Horsemen, that's going to be a lot harder."

"Two left," he said, almost snatching the glass from the bartender as he reached their table.

"The most powerful two," she agreed. He caught a glimpse of a worried expression flickering over her face as he swallowed half of his drink in a single mouthful.

"Why are you here?"

For a moment, he thought she wasn't going to answer that either, watching her fiddle with the coaster under her glass, her teeth catch her lower lip as she stared at the table top. Then she looked up at him.

"I wanted to see how you were doing," she said.

"Doin' fine," he told her, leaning back in the chair. "All our ducks in a row."

She looked pointedly at his glass but didn't comment and he shrugged off the tacit rebuke.

"There's something else, Dean," she said, finishing her whiskey. "About Death."

* * *

><p>"Something else like what?" he asked, and Ellie saw his face shutter up.<p>

She knew the admission of missing her had come hard for him. She just wasn't certain that it hadn't also come from too much whiskey and too much pain.

"How 'bout we finish this conversation someplace more comfortable?" she suggested, seeing him look casually around, his eyes just slightly unfocussed.

He smirked half-heartedly at her. "Like your place?"

Tilting her head a little, she nodded. "Yeah, like my place."

"This mean I'm gonna get lucky?"

"It means," she said, leaning over to grab the straps of her pack. "That if you pass out, I won't have to call Sam to come get your sorry ass."

"Tell me what you really think."

"Wouldn't do anything else."

He looked over at the bartender, lifting his glass. "I'm fine here."

The bartender's gaze shifted to Ellie and she shook her head, registering Dean's disbelieving snort as he saw the byplay.

"Hey, I'm legal, you know."

"Yeah. But you've had enough of this cheap rotgut."

"I'm not going anywhere," Dean said, his mouth turning down mulishly. "I like it here."

Ellie picked up her bag and looked at him.

"But I like my hotel room better, and I have a much better class of whiskey there," she said, her tone reasonable. "One that won't give you the hangover of the century in the morning."

Dean's eyes narrowed slightly. "Tell me about Death."

"When we're there."

He let out a frustrated exhale and she relaxed, seeing him give in. Not, she thought, because he wanted to. He just looked too tired to keep fighting.

"Alright."

* * *

><p>Ellie looked dubiously at the Impala as they came out of the bar, turning back to him. "Can you drive?"<p>

"Since I was thirteen," Dean said, walking to the car to open the passenger door for her. He waved a careless hand at the seat. "You don't trust me?"

"I trust you, just, um, not your reflexes," she hedged, looking past him to the black and beige interior.

"You think the angels'd let me get away with a fatal car crash now?" he asked her, his voice mocking.

"Good point," she allowed, getting in.

He closed the door behind her, and walked around the car. Ellie watched him in the mirrors. He looked steady enough. She wasn't sure why she'd insisted on going back to the hotel. It would be more comfortable and she did have a bottle of Blue there, a much better class of whiskey than the crap the bar had served. That was the excuse, though. The reason, she didn't want to look at it.

"Next left." She told him as he started the engine and pulled out onto the empty street.

If nothing else, she thought as he drove smoothly through the empty streets, following her directions back to the hotel, he could at least handle the quantities of liquor he was putting away.


	2. Chapter 2 Fractures

**Chapter 2 Fractures**

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><p>Dean looked around as they came out of the elevator and walked down the hall. It wasn't the Plaza, he thought, but it was at least a couple of stars up from the very ordinary motel he and Sam were staying in. The walls were clean and the speckled beige carpet seemed to be as well.<p>

Ellie unlocked the door marked Suite 3 and walked through, holding it open. He looked around as she flipped on the lights, following her in and stopping in the middle of the large living room while she closed the door and locked it behind them.

"Nice."

The rooms were large and comfortable, the living and sleeping areas separated by a pair of glass-paned sliding doors; a long bench providing reasonable kitchen facilities. The living area held a long, overstuffed sofa, and two matching armchairs facing it. The small dining table next to the kitchenette already held piles of books and pads, and Ellie's laptop sat open next to them. She was like Sam in that way, he thought. Researched the crap out of everything.

Tossing her bag onto one of the armchairs, Ellie walked to the kitchen bench, taking two glasses from the cupboard and pouring them each a measure from the bottle of Blue Label on the counter. Dean raised his brows as he noticed the bottle.

"Glad to see you weren't lying about the whiskey." He took the glass from her and sat on the sofa. "Alright, we're here. Drinking the good stuff. So tell me."

Sitting at the other end of the long sofa, Ellie looked at her glass for a moment.

"I don't know how accurate the information is, although I do trust the source," she said, looking up at him. "In Revelations, the Horsemen are released one by one, each one set free to do their jobs to sort the faithful from those who won't be saved –"

He shook his head impatiently. "Yeah, I saw the movie, get to the punchline."

"When Lucifer summoned Death in Carthage, he bound the entity with a spell," Ellie said. "He controls it now, like a – a servant."

"Okay. So?"

She made a face at him. "So … Death isn't doing the job he was supposed to be doing," she said. "He's under the personal control of the archangel, and Lucifer is going to use that to target areas he wants to get rid of – like big cities."

Dean let the whiskey roll around in his mouth, savouring the taste, as he considered the implications of that one.

"Didn't he do the same with Famine?" he asked after a moment. He wasn't sure that the devil controlling the Horsemen meant anything significant. "I mean that sonofabitch was looking for Sam – waiting for him."

"He might've," Ellie agreed. "How did you kill him?"

Looking away, Dean said, "I didn't. Not really."

"Sam?"

"We didn't know Famine was in town when we got there," Dean said slowly, hunching up over his glass as he remembered the wire report about the couple in Emporia. "Took us a while to figure it out. And then it was too late."

_I think it got to me, Dean. I think I'm hungry for it ... you better ... you better lock me down – but good._

He closed his eyes. "Sam could feel the – uh – he could feel it coming back. He said he couldn't control himself. I 'cuffed him to the sink in the motel bathroom and me and Cas went after Famine."

Cas'd been lost as well. Raw meat. He felt his stomach turn over slowly at the memory of the angel kneeling on the floor, shovelling the half-frozen ground beef into his mouth.

"It was a set up, for Sam," he said, glancing at the woman at the other end of the sofa. Ellie's attention was locked on him and he looked away, not sure how much he wanted to tell her. He'd gone over the whole damned mess in his head a hundred times now.

"Famine knew we were there, and he sent two demons to get Sam," he continued, a little reluctantly, lifting his glass and swallowing down another mellow mouthful. "They were – they weren't supposed to survive. Sam drank both of them and then came after me."

He risked a glance at her face, relieved to see that she wasn't disgusted by what his brother had done. Seeing the small crease between her brows, he recognised the familiar tell. She was paying attention, thinking it through in high gear. He wondered vaguely if she would see more in his account than he had.

"Famine had – uh - bowled Cas over with hunger and he had about five or six demons with him. I –" Dean hesitated, his fingers tightening around the glass, the memory of walking into the restaurant bright in his mind. "It didn't affect me. At all."

"The hunger?" Ellie asked.

Nodding, he said, "Sam busted in and Famine told him to finish the rest of the demons there – told him Sam could have as much as he wanted. Sam, uh, he refused and Famine – he just sucked them down. But that's where he made his mistake."

"How?"

"Sam – uh, he could still affect the demons, even in the Horseman," he tried to explain what he'd seen, what he'd thought had happened. "He pulled them all out, breaking Famine as he did it. I – I –"

Stopping again, he swallowed as he remembered the way he'd just frozen, watching Sam rip the Horseman apart with his power, the demons Famine'd eaten burning up on the floor. Sam hadn't looked like Sam, at that moment.

"I cut off his ring and then it was over."

"Except it wasn't," Ellie guessed, her voice soft. "What happened to Sam?"

"Uh, me and Cas, we put him in Bobby's panic room," he said, looking back at his glass. "Till he was over the cravings."

He tossed back the last mouthful in the glass and got to his feet, not wanting to look at Ellie, or his memories of his brother's screams and pleading. Or the weakness that'd driven him out of the house and into the yard, to stare at the sky and ask an entity he couldn't really have faith in but had too much proof to deny, for help.

Walking to the kitchen counter, he poured himself another glass of the Blue, filling it to the top this time.

"Dean," Ellie said from behind him and he waited, his back to her.

"There weren't any other choices," she said and he turned around, wanting to believe that, knowing it wasn't the truth. At least, not the whole truth.

"I didn't do it for him," he grated. "I did it because I couldn't deal, Ellie. Not with seeing him like that. Not with knowing what he could do. I did it so's I wouldn't have to look at my brother and see a monster."

He dragged in a deep breath and lifted the glass, swallowing half in a series of gulps that lit up his throat. There wasn't enough whiskey in the world to give him a moment's peace from what he'd done or the memories that clung to his every waking minute, and most of his sleeping ones, of Sam in that room. Everything he'd believed, had still believed, about himself, and his brother, had begun to fracture.

"Neither of you are monsters," she said, letting out a soft sigh.

"Neither of us are people you want to invite into the family home, either," he countered, looking at the floor. He didn't want to get into this, he thought. The things he'd done, there was no getting rid of the stains on his soul. And Sam was the same. Those demons had been in meatsuits, innocent men and women, possessed and killed. Collateral damage, he tried to tell himself. But it didn't stick. They were killers. Not heroes.

"Where'd you get the intel on what Lucifer's doing?" he asked, seeing her quick glance at the change in subject. She seemed okay to let it go.

"Some friends in Richmond," she told him. "They, uh, specialise in keeping track of things like that."

"You're kidding."

"Would I kid about something like that?" she asked him dryly. "The devil isn't hiding his light under a bushel. He doesn't care who knows what he's up to."

"I thought he had to follow the blueprint, same as the other dicks?"

"No. There are some things that he'll have to follow absolutely, but he has a lot more freedom in what he does, and when, than the prophecies account for."

"There's a cheerful thought." Dean grimaced. "What kind of things are we talking about?"

"I don't know. He can personalise things, I guess, work on his issues," she said quietly, looking more closely at him. "Sam said it'd been a bad few months."

He looked over at her. "Understatement."

"Dean, what happened to you?"

"That obvious, huh?" He ducked his head, looking away. She was the only one he could say things straight out to. Maybe that was because she knew most of it. Not all of the details but the broad strokes. Maybe it was because she was the only one who asked him head-on. He didn't know how she seemed to know him, sometimes better than he knew himself. He didn't know how she'd gotten through his defences so easily. It wasn't that she comforted him, not really. It might've been that she was honest with him. She didn't tell him he'd done the right thing if he hadn't.

He still didn't want to talk about it. But he needed to. That recognition dawned slowly as he leaned back against the counter. He needed to tell someone because the screaming in his head had just about reached an unendurable level.

"I don't – I don't know what I'm doin', half the time," he admitted, his voice deepening and half-muffled against his chest. "Most of the time."

"Is this about Carthage?"

He walked back to the sofa, dropping onto it and looking down at his glass. Carthage. Lawrence. Emporia. Bobby's. Heaven.

"We listened to a demon. Again," he said, rubbing a hand over his face tiredly as he tried to sort out the big things. "Gave us the Colt, told us where Lucifer would be and we went in there like – like cowboys."

Leaning back against the sofa, he closed his eyes. "All I've done is lead people – good people – to their deaths."

"That's not true and you know it."

"Yeah, it is." He opened his eyes, turning his head to slightly to look at her.

"Ellen wouldn't have gone unless she'd thought that the cause was worth the risk, Dean," Ellie said, setting her glass on the low table in front of the sofa. "She would've moved heaven and earth to keep Jo out of it if she hadn't thought there was some chance of success. You knew them better than I did – are you saying that you somehow presented the case as being better than it was? Or did you force them along?"

"I asked them for help." In his mind's eye, he saw the street again. Meg. The splash of something invisible stepping through a puddle of water. The dim interior of the hardware store. That break in Ellen's voice as she'd tried to pretend that Jo's wounds were not fatal. The force of the explosion. "They were there because I asked."

Ellie slid along the sofa, her hand reaching out and covering his. The light contact sent a frisson through his skin, where hers touched his, and he straightened a little.

"C'mon, Dean. They knew the risks. Same as you did, and Bobby did, and Sam did. You're not going to convince me that Ellen Harvelle didn't know exactly what you would be facing."

_She might've been right_, he thought. It didn't change a thing. He'd asked. He'd asked because he hadn't wanted to do the job alone. Him and Sam. He hadn't thought they'd be able to do it alone. The others, they'd come along to set a few diversions, keep watch … handle the getting out of Dodge part.

"They died. For us. For this – stupid – fucking – thing we're caught in," he said, the taste of the whiskey disappearing under a bitter gall that seemed to flood his mouth. They'd never had a chance.

His gaze dropped to her hand as her fingers curled around his a little more tightly. Nicked and scarred, like his own, the wiry strength of her grip couldn't take away from the warmth and softness of her skin, or the odd sense of connection he could feel. He wondered how much more he'd have to drink before her touch didn't hurt quite so much. He didn't want to pull away.

"Dean, it's not up to you to shoulder the responsibility for everything and everyone. It's bad enough that you're still taking responsibility for Sam – he's a grown man, entitled to make his own choices, whether you like them or not. Your business is backing him in whatever choice it is that he does make."

Dean shook his head. "Even if he's making the wrong choice?"

She was looking at him, and he caught the faint frustration in her voice. "Yeah, even if it's the wrong choice – in your opinion. You're entitled to go through the logic of a decision with him; that's what friends and family do. But to try and control what he does? No."

She was right and he knew it. They'd talked about it, him and Sam, after that celebrity god thing. He wasn't sure when it'd started to change again, but he knew why.

"I've lost too many people," he told her, ducking his head so she wouldn't see the pain of that admission in his eyes. His mother. His father. Jim and Caleb and Ash and Pamela. He didn't need that many people, just a few. Just a couple to trust and put his back against. Their faces haunted his dreams. "I can't lose any more."

"Dean."

He felt her palm against his cheek, eyes opening wider as that gentle press turned him back to her. The light touch was somehow shockingly intimate, reverberating through his nerves as he stared at her for a long moment, his pulse thundering at the base of his throat, so loud that he thought she could hear it. What'd changed? Had something changed?

"You can't hold everything in a fixed position," Ellie said, her hand dropping as she met his eyes. "Life isn't like that. Change is the way it all works."

His skin was still tingling where her hand had rested and it took him a couple of seconds to register what she'd said. He'd wanted – needed – those people. Every mistake had cost him another friend.

"I think I've paid more than my fair share, Ellie."

"The people you've lost were in a risky business, Dean. And they knew it," she reminded him, her tone mild. "You used to say that you couldn't imagine living past thirty, being a hunter. When did that change?"

He ducked his head again, brows drawing together. "It's different."

"No, it's not." Her voice hardened a little. "The world hasn't changed."

"What do I _do_ if I lose everyone, Ellie?" He lifted his head, bitterly aware that he couldn't hide that fear from her, any more than he could from himself, knowing it was written on his face. "What do I do then?"

"You start again. And then, again, if need be."

"Hell, don't sugar-coat it for me, will you." He rubbed his hand over his eyes. He could feel the whiskey, dulling down his reactions, blurring out the pain a little. He'd thought he'd be floating by now, but the liquor had barely numbed the pain.

"People make their own choices," Ellie pointed out. "And the responsibility for those choices is theirs. Not yours. Their deaths weren't on you."

She ducked her head a little, the light catching in her hair. "Like Bobby," she added, looking back at him, one brow slightly lifted. "Like your father."

He did pull back then, twisting away and getting to his feet. He heard her exhale behind him.

"My father left us when we needed him the most," he said, walking to the counter and grabbing the bottle. "How was that responsible?"

She didn't answer and he turned to look at her over his shoulder. She was holding her glass, sipping her whiskey, her face half-shadowed, and he felt a flash of irrational anger at her.

"C'mon, Ellie," he said, an edge to his voice. "You got all the answers. Tell me how my dad made a decision to leave us with a demon hunting us and Sam grieving for his girl and going out of his mind with visions?"

"If you're itching for a fight, go back to the bar," she said, her face expressionless as she looked at him.

His anger disappeared as fast as it'd come. She was right, he decided, turning back to the counter and pouring a couple of shots into his glass. He was in a corner and he wanted to fight. Wanted to do something. Something to feel like he wasn't failing.

"Sorry." He turned around, the word coming out grudgingly.

"No," Ellie said, her gaze on her glass. "I'm sorry. I was out of line."

The abrupt one-eighty stopped him cold. "I – uh –"

"Maybe we should call it a night," she cut him off lightly, putting her glass on the table and getting to her feet.

"What? No."

_Shit_.

In an eyeblink he saw the rest of the evening … _leaving, going back to the bar, getting kicked out, Sam's face when he got back to the room, even if Sam didn't want ask twenty questions, he'd fall asleep and his armour would vanish and the dreams would come_ … he swallowed as he looked around the room, his brain trying to come up with a good – no, a _vital_ – reason to stay. A reason she'd agreed with.

"No – wait a sec –" He walked across the room and put his glass on the table, blocking her way. "C'mon – I _said_ I was sorry –"

"It's been a long day," Ellie said, looking past him to the door. "And you and Sam –"

Standing there, in front of her, he felt his throat jam up with what he wanted to say, what he knew was the right thing to say, the words refusing to come out. He stared at her profile, trying to think of anything that would get past that log-jam and make sense.

"You know me."

That hadn't been what he'd wanted to say, and he had no idea where it'd come from, but it got her attention. She looked at him.

"Not really."

He wasn't sure what to make of that. "Better than anyone else."

* * *

><p>Ellie looked at the floor. It was, she thought, as close as he could come to admitting that he didn't want to leave.<p>

He was vulnerable and, she thought, so was she. It wasn't a smart move to let this play on any longer. Turning away from him, she sat down on the sofa again and she heard his soft exhale as he followed her and sat down as well. When it came to the man beside her, when had she ever played it smart?

"What happened after Death warned Bobby?" she asked, picking up her glass and watching him as she swallowed a mouthful.

"We ran into a couple of hunters who thought the world'd be a better place without Sam," he said after a moment. "Walt Ryerson and Roy Bishop – you know 'em?"

"Only by reputation." Her nose wrinkled up. "They tried to kill him?"

* * *

><p>The shotgun's blast filled his head again. In the confines of the motel room it'd been thunderously loud. Shocking. Final. <em>He made us and we just snuffed his brother, you idiot. You want to spend the rest of your life knowing Dean Winchester's on your ass? 'Cause I don't. Shoot 'im.<em>

Being shot at close range was a surprisingly okay way to die. It'd been fast. Too fast to register pain or worry about what happens next or anything else.

"Didn't try. Killed us both," he said, leaning back into the corner of the sofa, his eyes half-closed.

"You look pretty good for a month-old corpse?"

He grinned a little, aware that there wasn't much humour in the expression. "It was a set-up," he said to her, Zachariah's nasally voice coming back to him. _Wow. Running from angels. On foot. In Heaven_.

"Someone wanted us in Heaven," he told her. _Joshua_. Zachariah and the rest of the dicks had just wanted to grab them, torture the crap out of him until he'd agree to letting Michael in.

"We met this –" he hesitated, wondering if Joshua was an angel. He was just the gardener, he'd said. "Angel, I think. Some kind of angel. Said his name was Joshua –"

"You met the Gardener?" Ellie's voice rose a note or two and Dean turned to look at her in surprise.

"You know him?"

"Of him," she said, nodding. "He tends to Heaven's gardens. As above, so below. The real Garden of Eden."

Shaking his head a little, Dean said, "Yeah. We didn't know about it. Didn't have a clue. He said that God wanted to pass on a message."

He saw her brows lift and felt his mouth curl up derisively. "Told us to back off. Trying to find him. Joshua said he knew about it all and it wasn't his problem."

"Well, I guess he's right," Ellie said slowly.

"What?!"

She turned to him with a small smile. "He gave free will. The ability to choose a course of destiny for ourselves. If you have freedom of choice, you also have the responsibility for those choices. If we make a mess, we have to clean it up."

"We didn't make the mess," Dean argued, leaning forward. "His dick angels manipulated us from before we were born to free Lucifer! We wouldn't be in this mess if they hadn't –"

"You want God to save everyone, Dean?"

"Hell, yeah!"

"Somehow, I don't think any of this was just the angels and demons."

"You get religion or something?" he asked her, brows drawing together.

She snorted and shook her head. "No. Religion is just people trying to make sense of things, interpreting it all in whatever way fits their preconceived ideas – or axes to grind," she said. "But do I believe that God's watching? Yes."

"Not doing a great job of it," Dean muttered, picking up his glass and swallowing a mouthful.

"He's not as straightforward as you," she said. "And he promised Noah that he wouldn't intervene like that again."

"Fixing this wouldn't take a flood," Dean countered sourly. "Just grounding his kids."

She laughed, looking away. "I don't disagree, Dean. But I'm not looking to divine intervention. That's Cecil B. de Mille you're thinking of, and it's not going to happen."

"If this is a – a test of some kind," he said. "Who the hell's it for? We're the ones getting mashed, between Heaven and Hell."

* * *

><p>"I don't know," Ellie admitted. The angels had been thwarted by the man sitting next to her just enough to make them realise they weren't as all-powerful as they'd thought. The inhabitants of Hell were finding the same thing. None of it seemed coincidental to her.<p>

"God gave humanity free will and to those who are willing to ask and to listen, his strength, love, courage, fortitude. Those things that help people to have faith to get through the bad times and keep going," she said, thinking about that. Faith had gotten her home. A faith in herself. A faith in the man beside her. A faith in something that seemed to fill her with strength when she couldn't find the energy to keep going, that had diverted the bear, had kept her alive. "And people seem to do their best when things are going to hell, not when it's all easy."

He scowled at that. "Didn't really take you for a believer, Ellie."

"I didn't really see you as someone who would turn away from help when you needed it," she countered gently.

His eyes narrowed. "I've _begged_ for help, time after time."

"And you got it. Sometimes not in the way you expected, but you still got it."

She got to her feet, crossing the room to pick up the bottle from the counter and walked back to the sofa with it. "How many times have you come up with a plan at the last minute that got you and Sam out of serious trouble? How many times have you dodged Fate? You think that all just luck? I'm sorry it wasn't all lightning bolts and wrath from Heaven, but it does seem like a lot of proof to me."

He looked up at her as she leaned over the table to fill his glass, and she saw his expression change, his gaze thoughtful.

"Who rescued you from Hell, Dean? Who pulled you and Sam from the convent when Lucifer rose?"

"Who didn't lift a finger when I was chucked into Hell?" he argued, taking the glass and waving a hand around at the room in general. "Who didn't step in to stop Sam from believing in Ruby? Or to save my mom when she walked in on the demon?"

Setting the bottle on the table, Ellie walked around to the sofa and sat down again. "You made a choice to sacrifice your soul for Sam's life," she said, her voice low and serious. "Sam made a choice to believe in Ruby. Your mother made a choice to save your father instead of letting him die."

His expression became stony and she wondered if it was such a good idea to push him on this, now.

"That's free will, Dean," she said. "You want someone to save you from the choices you make? Or to take away the ability to choose freely – and pay for the consequences?"

It wasn't like he didn't know all this, she thought. He'd faced up to every choice he'd ever made. Faced the consequences, accepted the responsibility and paid for every single one.

"I could'a used some help every now and then," he said unwillingly. "Making some of those choices."

Smiling, Ellie shook her head at him. "You wouldn't have given up your soul for Sam, if you got a chance to do it again?"

He looked away and she knew that he would make that choice the same way if it was presented to him another thousand times.

"I wouldn't've given up," he said, after a long moment of silence. "Gotten off."

From the underlying vehemence in his voice, she guessed that he wasn't sure about that, not a hundred percent. It was something he was afraid of, in himself. Weakness.

"No," she agreed quietly. "No, I don't think you would've, if you'd known."

The flickered sideways glance he gave her seem to hold a wealth of emotion, but his expression smoothed before she could work out what she'd seen in it.

"Why are you here, Ellie?"

"I told you. I came to tell you about Lucifer and the Horseman, Dean," she said, looking away at the almost-lie. It wasn't a lie, not really. It just wasn't the whole truth. Her stomach knotted up at the thought of telling him why she'd come, wondering if he would believe it.

In the months since she'd left Manhattan, through the hunt for the tskuareg and the injuries that'd brought and the long, long walk out of the Alaskan wilderness and back to the nearest civilisation, the one thing that had kept her on her feet and going had been the thought of seeing him again. It was harder to lie to yourself when any moment could bring death, she knew now. And pretending that she didn't feel what she'd been feeling had seemed futile at best, dangerously self-delusional at worst.

* * *

><p>Dean watched her face, unable to read the shadowed expressions crossing it. When she turned back, he sensed she'd come to a decision, but it was something that worried her, something she felt uncertain about.<p>

"What?" He put his glass down and waited, unaccountably nervous at the way her face seemed paler, drawn a little with strain.

"And I came because … I missed you too, Dean."


	3. Chapter 3 Surrender

**Chapter 3 Surrender**

* * *

><p>Ellie felt the sudden stillness between them in that moment, searching his face for a reaction, her heart thudding fast against her ribs. He was staring at his glass, face half-hidden by the lamp's shadow and she swallowed nervously, wondering if she'd been wrong, if what she'd thought had been a mistake.<p>

She'd known him for three years, through pain and blood and fear, and more rarely, through good times, quiet discussions and sharing information, taking time out to relax when they'd been waiting for a job, or just waiting. She knew things about him that no one else did, and sometimes those things had come to her without him telling her – or showing her; she'd seen them clearly without knowing how she knew. But in this moment, stretching out endlessly, with a beating silence that seemed to echo her pulse, she didn't know what he was thinking. Or feeling.

He hadn't moved, and she closed her eyes, turning away and getting to her feet.

"Anyway, it seemed a possibility that if Lucifer had Death on a leash, he's probably got the same control over Pestilence," she said, carrying her glass to the kitchenette's sink and setting it carefully down. "And it took me awhile, but I remembered what Sam said about that town in Oregon, the one you thought was some kind of testing ground for a virus –"

* * *

><p>Dean let out the breath he'd been holding. He wasn't sure she'd meant what she'd said, in the same way he had earlier, but he recognised her agitation as he watched her stop at the sink, her back to him and lines of tension visible in the hunch of her shoulders.<p>

_I missed you too._

Had she? Missed him? He was only half-listening to her theories about the Horsemen as he got to his feet and walked across the room, aware that his heartbeat was booming in his ears and his palms were damp.

"Ellie –"

She started, swinging around and leaning back against the sink, her eyes widening a little, finding him so close. He looked down at her, distantly registering the faint flush of colour that was filling her cheeks, his gaze dropping to see her pulse beating fast in the hollow of her throat.

"What did you mean?"

"About what?" she said, her gaze cutting away from him. It took him a moment to realise she was as nervous as he was, her knuckles whitening where her hands gripped the edge of the counter.

"About – uh – missing me," he said, not sure he was going to be able to keep going if she made him spell it all out.

"Does it matter?" she asked, looking slightly past him.

The temptation to give up was instant and strong. To keep his feelings to himself, so if he was wrong, no one could see it, no one would know. It was the way he'd worked almost his entire life, and both times he'd made an exception, he'd regretted it. The first had been devastating. The second … the second time had been payback, he'd thought at the time. Jo'd seen through him, seen that he wasn't going to give her what she'd wanted, was only offering what he wanted. His only regret about that had been that he hadn't been able to apologise for it. She'd died before he'd had the chance.

He closed his eyes briefly, ducking his head as he let out his breath in a long, gusty exhale. "Yeah," he admitted, recognising briefly that it was an admission to himself as much as it was to her. "It matters."

Even at the sound of her soft sigh, he couldn't make himself look up. He kept his gaze nailed to the floor, staring at his feet, unconsciously tensed to hear that he'd been wrong.

"I meant … that I wanted to see you again," Ellie said slowly. "Wanted to be with you, again."

_Wanted to be with you. _He watched her feet take a step closer to him, his gaze flicking up involuntarily.

"But you knew that," she said, meeting his eyes.

"No." He shook his head. He'd wanted to believe it. But he hadn't known. "I didn't."

She was standing close, looking at him with an expression he couldn't really read. Reaching out, his fingertips traced the line of the new scar on her temple, feeling that low charge along his nerves again, seeing it in her as she caught her breath, her eyes widening slightly, the pupils dilating.

_What was that_, he wondered remotely, as she caught his hand in her own, drawing it down and looking at it, turning it over. Glancing down, the tingle of electric sensation stronger at the feel of her hand around his, he saw his hand as he thought she might be seeing it. The hand of a labourer; calloused by the weapons and tools he used, nicked and scarred and roughened over the knuckles and joints; too many impacts with too many hard surfaces.

She lifted it, her eyes meeting his as she drew his fingertips over her lips.

The only sound in the room was the sharp intake of his breath.

_Not just another woman_. Not just a welcoming, receptive body and a way to decompress and forget about the pain for the night. Looking into her eyes, memories thundered through him, memories of things that'd happened and things that hadn't, entangled with a surge of emotion that he didn't understand, couldn't get a grip on, powerful enough to make him shake.

He didn't want to make a mistake.

He took a half-step forward, closing the distance between them slowly, watching her, giving her time to move away if that's what she wanted, his hand moving lightly along her jaw, his fingers slipping into her hair.

She didn't move away.

He bent his head, a thread of astonishment wreathing through the combination of nervousness and desire as his mouth met hers, lips brushing together and that low-voltage charge hit him harder, taking his breath, shivering down through every nerve. Pulling back a little, he saw that whatever that was, it had affected her the same way; he could feel her trembling, against his hand, against his body.

In his dreams, it always felt like he'd come home, not to a home he'd known, not to something familiar, exactly, but a place, a feeling, of immeasurable safety, where he didn't have to try to be anything he wasn't, where everything he was, was accepted and welcomed and wanted. His chest felt tight as he felt those same feelings overwhelming him here and now, enmeshed in a fierce and growing arousal that was burning right through him, a desperate need that would drive him to his knees if he couldn't get closer.

Her arms slid around his neck, and she pressed herself against him, her lips soft and warm on his and he felt all the walls, all the defences and layers of protection he'd built over years and kept in place, vanish; blasted into fragments by a hunger that throbbed through him, sheared aside by sensations that coruscated wildly at every point they touched, dissolved in a surge of emotion that swallowed him whole, nothing like it in his experience, in his life. He gave himself up. Willingly.

* * *

><p>Against her lips, Ellie felt the faint hum of his groan, echoed in her as his arms tightened around her, pulling her closer. They were too strong, building too fast, these emotions that'd been held in check for too long, half-buried, unlooked at. She'd been careful, so damned careful not to think of him in this way, not to want him or let him see anything of how she'd felt. She wasn't dishonest enough to lie to herself that she hadn't hoped this moment would come, eventually. When he was ready. <em>Was it the right time?<em> She didn't know, not for sure. But if there was a time in his life when he needed someone to love him, it was now. And she did. She had for a long time. She suspected she always would.

Her reactions to his touch were still a shock, lighting her up, desire crackling along her nerves and making a mockery of any thought of control, any possibility of holding any part of herself back, keeping anything apart. Filled with languid waves of pleasure, her blood hot and swelling her breasts, the nipples hard and aching to be touched, she was losing herself in the sensations that rippled in an unpredictable affrettando beat through her body. No one had drawn a response like this from her before and it was as frightening as it was unbearable, to want and need and feel so much.

She blinked, gasping for breath when he drew back slightly, staring up into green eyes that were as dark and stunned as her own. He turned a little, turning her with him and she caught a glimpse of the glass-paned doors, dragging in a breath as she took a step back toward them, before his mouth covered hers again and the idea of purpose disappeared.

* * *

><p>The lamp on the nightstand cast a soft, gold-tinted light over the bed, gleaming on her hair, on the smooth curves and planes of her skin. Dean leaned on his elbow, his breathing raggedly uneven, his heart thudding against his ribs as his gaze moved slowly down the length of her body.<p>

He was nervous, he realised, for the first time in a long, long time. Excited and nervous and so aroused he thought he'd come if she even touched him. He tried to concentrate on what he was doing, but he'd thought about this moment for too long, dreamed of it too many times and he couldn't stop the flutter in his stomach or the trembling in his fingers as he unbuttoned her jeans and eased them down her legs, letting his fingertips run down her skin as the denim slid along their length. When he looked back up at her, her eyes were half-closed, her lips were parted and he could hear her breathing, see the rapid rise and fall of her breasts.

_Fuck, she was beautiful. Out of his league. Hunter. Friend. Wanting him_. The fragmented thoughts weren't coherent, they blinked in and out with the unsteady throb of his pulse.

He slid his hands back up her legs; fingers spread wide, his thumbs reaching to the inside of her thighs as he inched higher. She arched a little toward him and he heard her soft gasp as his hands curved out to her hips and then slid back in together over her stomach, slipping under the hem of her tee shirt, slowing as they passed over her ribs. They moved out to her sides, only his thumbs dragging over the curve of her breasts, over the smooth, thin silk of her bra.

Lifting the shirt over her head as she raised her arms, he tossed it aside, and lowered his head to her throat. The skin was as soft as it looked, and he slowed down, finding the most sensitive spots, shoulder muscles bunching as he held his weight over her and felt her fingers curl hard around them, clenching and unclenching with every heated kiss he left on her.

* * *

><p>Leaning back against the pillows piled against the bedhead, Ellie watched him through half-closed eyes, her heart beat a fortissimo pounding in her blood and an incandescent heat pulsing and spreading through her body. She couldn't stop the trembling that was shaking her; a combination of nerves, fear, the intense arousal he was awakening in her body, the way she felt about him … it was making this too important, too vital to her and she couldn't relax, couldn't let go, every touch, every sensation like a live wire against her skin, detonating through her nervous system.<p>

She stretched out fully, her toes curling under as the soft caress of his tongue slid unexpectedly along a tender area, shuddering down the length of her body, the feeling too much to bear for too long. Pulling him down to lie beside her, her hands slipped under his shirt and she dragged her fingernails lightly over his skin, pushing the shirt up and over his head. She lowered her head to his chest, one hand freeing the long fall of her hair from its ties, hearing his breath hitch a little as the strands spilled over him, and she tasted him slowly, exploring him with her mouth.

* * *

><p>Dean arched slightly as the touch of her lips burned a path from his chest straight to his groin, his hands running through the silky fall of her hair. She was finding places he'd never even considered before, the feel of her hands, of her lips and tongue on him turning him inside-out, an exquisite torture that he didn't want to stop but wasn't sure he'd survive.<p>

He couldn't catch his breath and for a frozen second, as her fingers slid along him, he wondered why she didn't bring back the memories he had of Hell, why her touch was different to the others, her responses didn't make him jump, flinching from the expected sight of a gleaming blade. He looked down the length of his body at her, and she looked up, and the thoughts and his fear of his memories vanished; the open desire in her face, a desire he thought was only for him, igniting a wildfire reaction that swept everything else aside.

There was no decision to move slowly, to deliberately increase the ache of arousal building, the electrifying frisson where their skin touched and slid against the other's … neither one of them could go faster. This time, their first time, wasn't like any other encounter either of them had had before, and time lost meaning, the outside world with its problems and angels and demons faded away, leaving them in a place where nothing else existed.

When Ellie unbuttoned his jeans, and slipped her fingers under the waistband, he shivered helplessly, his body so sensitive, so acutely aware of her touch, even her breath on his skin was an unbearable caress. He lifted his hips as she drew the jeans down, her loose hair trailing down his body, the soft strands sliding and slipping over him, tormentingly light. Her lips grazed over him, and he moaned, shuddering with the effort of keeping some kind of control, each near-miss jacking him up, inflaming him further.

She sat up at the end of the bed, taking off her bra and dropping it onto the floor, sliding her pants down her hips and legs, kneeling in front of him. He stared at her, dimly aware his mouth was open. She was all shades of pale cream and rose and auburn; slender, not an ounce of fat over the whipcord muscle; her breasts full and round, her waist narrow, the triangle of curls between her legs a shade darker than her hair. He saw her scars; the two holes to either side of her belly button, where a bullet had passed through a fold in her flesh; the long and more recent claw marks that stood out red from her ribs to her hip; old scars and newer ones, marking her as similar scars had marked him, before Cas had brought him back from the beating that had almost killed him.

His breath caught in his throat as his eyes met hers and he swallowed. He thought he would've given anything to be able to say something, to understand the feelings that were trying to drown him and say something to her, but nothing would come out and however it was she did it, she seemed to know that, moving up to him as he sat up, her arms going around his neck as his mouth claimed hers, leaving him to tell her in whatever way he could.

His hand skimmed over her shoulder to run down the side of her breast, thumb rubbing slowly over her nipple, already hard and erect. He groaned deep in his chest as she slid her thigh up over his, inviting him to move further. Kissing and tasting down the long curve of her throat, his tongue slid into the valley between her breasts as his hand stroked down her stomach, and his fingers slipped between her legs. She arched up against them, twisting a little, pushing her breast against his mouth when his thumb found the sensitive, swollen mound in the soft, auburn curls. His eyes closed tightly as he felt her moist heat, his fingers slipping through the folds of her flesh, his thumb rubbing in slow, hard circles.

Every thrust of her hips, every soft, low moan and shuddering raw gasp was making him harder, an overpowering turn on to know he was giving her pleasure, that she was as abandoned to him as he was to her. He opened his eyes, watching her face, fighting against his own need, losing himself in her reactions. When he felt her muscles clenching around his fingers, he buried his face between her breasts, his breathing as fast and ragged as hers, straining for control. The aftershocks came thick and fast, and every sensation against his fingers was transmitted instantaneously to his groin, concentrating there until he thought he'd explode.

"Dean …" Ellie sucked in a deep breath, holding it as another volatile ripple spread out through her, her voice dropping to a hoarse whisper when it took the air from her lungs. "I can't … I need you … please."

He was rock-hard, iron-hard, and his head was spinning, the raw need he could see in her eyes, could hear in her voice, accelerating his pulse and pounding through his veins. He wanted to taste her, but he was afraid that he would lose control the moment his tongue slid down those hot folds and plunged into her. _Next time_, he thought, hoping there would be a next time.

Lifting himself slightly, he held his weight on his forearm as he looked down at her, her hair spread out under her, copper and gold and carnelian in the lamp's warm light. She pulled him close as he shifted up her body a little, lifting her head and kissing him, and he slid effortlessly into her liquid heat and velvet softness, molten pressure engulfing him, squeezing him, and he couldn't find any air to breathe, the feeling surrounding him incendiary as he inched in.

It felt like the first time, he realised dazedly, looking down at her face and struggling against the sensations, against rolling waves of pleasure that were getting deeper and more intense with every deliberate, deep stroke. Not just their first time, but _the _first time. The first time he'd touched a woman intimately, the first time he'd kissed and been kissed passionately, the first time he'd pushed inside, feeling the heat and softness and aching pressure and wanting to stay there. It felt new and unknown, and his body and mind were overreacting to everything.

A low groan hummed against the inside of his lips as Ellie arched up under him, driving him in deep with her own thrusts against his hips, nearly sending him off the edge as he reached the point where he could feel everything, but he couldn't feel the difference between him and her, no boundary of skin existing, just a sea of sensation that went directly to his nervous system, lighting him like a reactor about to meltdown. He wanted to make it last, to take his time, but that was going to be impossible.

He felt her quicken, her soft moan spearing straight through him, and he ducked his head, eyes screwing shut as he tried to hold on. Her arms were wrapped around his neck as they'd been in the first long-ago dream, and he was filling up, sensation over sensation, breaking over him, ripping through him, his perceptions narrowing, focussing, his body shaking.

The flux of emotion, gravid and enormous, came without warning and he felt something shatter, somewhere deep down inside, some kind of release that was so intense it felt as if something had been bound tightly in him, and had finally broken free. Twisting through every cell, interwoven with the insistent need throbbing through his body, his heart stuttered against his ribs and he thrust harder, faster, deeper into her. She arched up in response and came, her muscles spasming all around him, calling out his name and his vision blurred along the edges, a sharp cry forced out as he was pushed over, unable to tell where he started and she ended. He was falling and he didn't care. For the first time in his life, he surrendered everything, letting go and knowing, without the faintest clue of how or why, somehow she would catch him.

* * *

><p>Ellie lay curled against his chest, hair loose and damp with perspiration, her muscles twitching, every now and then, as she stretched them out. Dean lay on his back, his arm curved around her, eyes closed as he waited for his pulse to slow. His head was a mess of intermingled strong after-images and vivid sense memories, edged and on fire with emotions that he couldn't recognise or define. He was at a loss to know how to describe what had happened, even to himself.<p>

He'd had all kinds of sex, with all kinds of women, in his life. Not one other time had been like that. Not just the way they'd both been so hyped up, so … _needful_ … of each other, he thought, but the emotion that'd hit him like a freight-train, amping up arousal, amping up everything. Too much, he'd thought, only half-coherently then. It had been, he considered, looking at the memories that were as tangled together now as his thoughts had been then … too much, too important, too … he didn't know what it'd been.

When he'd dreamed of her, the sex had been spectacular, but not like this … not like getting caught in a high-voltage wire or in the middle of a volcanic eruption. Not reaching into the deepest parts of him and tearing away his walls, letting everything out.

He turned his head slightly as another shiver ran through her and she stretched out again, feeling her smooth skin and taut muscles along his side. He had no doubts that, physically, what they'd just shared had had the same effect on her. He had no clue how she felt about it – about him – from any other perspective. He wasn't sure if he wanted to admit – even to himself – that not knowing that was making him antsy.

"What?" Ellie asked, lifting herself onto an elbow to see his face, and he looked away, inwardly cursing the sensitivity of her radar.

"I –" He stopped, not sure of what he wanted to know, or how to ask about it. "That – uh, this – is this real, Ellie?"

She lifted a brow, pushing a wayward strand of hair back from her face with the heel of her hand.

"In what sense? It feels pretty real to me."

Her hand slid across his chest and he felt that faint frisson again, fluttering a deeper heat. He tried to ignore it.

"I mean, was this … uh, were you – uh – did you want this?" he clarified uncertainly, too damned aware that no matter what he said, he was saying too much. "Or were you, uh, you know –" He looked away, face screwing up in discomfort. "– were you, uh, just trying to … um … you know, take my, uh, mind off things?"

He heard the warmth of her smile in her voice. "Can't you tell, Dean?"

"Uh, yeah … no. I – I, uh … I – I mean, it was great and – uh – I'm not complaining–" he said, his gaze dropping, brows knitting together as he gave up. "You know – never mind, uh, forget I said –"

She lifted her hand, putting her fingers over his lips and cutting him off. "Try not to make things worse," she told him, her tone light. "It's real, Dean. It wasn't to make you feel better or take your mind off the Apocalypse."

It wasn't exactly the answer he wanted. But it would do for now, he decided hurriedly as she leaned closer, her mouth brushing over his.

He'd kind of thought that he was past the days when arousal was instant and more or less continuous, but the kiss, slow and demanding, sent a shudder through him and he rolled onto his side, his hand running down over her hip and pulling her closer.


	4. Chapter 4 Revelation

**Chapter 4 Revelation**

* * *

><p>The darkness in the room was alleviated by the small lights of the alarm clock, the glowing red standby light on the television, and Dean could see a little. Enough to make out the long swathe of Ellie's hair over the pillow next to him.<p>

He listened to her breathing, soft and shallow. She wasn't asleep yet. He couldn't sleep. He'd been shocked that the second time had been as physically intense, perhaps more so, and as filled with those inexplicable and tearing emotions as the first. His nervous system was still buzzing, twitching the long muscles of his legs and back intermittently.

He should've been sound asleep, he knew. His body felt heavy, and aside from the tics and twitches of overloaded nerve endings, he felt loose and pleasantly tired and more relaxed than he could remember being for years.

Rolling onto his side, he looked down at her, lifting a hand to lightly touch her forehead, brush a loose strand of hair back from her face. There was a part of him that was mildly but thoroughly astonished that she was lying next to him, one arm soft and relaxed over his chest, that he could touch her and look at her, relishing that simple contact.

There had never been many people in his life that he could talk to. Less than a handful. And none of them, he thought, would ever have told him the whole truth, as they saw it. His father had held back more things than he'd imagined. Sam, for all his little brother tried to see who he was, didn't know him, not down deep, down where he lived and breathed. That wasn't Sam's fault. It was his. When it came down to it, he couldn't face the idea of Sam being disappointed in him. It was maybe a little ironic that his brother was, anyway.

He'd known Ellie for three years. The trust that'd built over that time, slowly, insidiously almost, without thought or volition, had become a solid rock in his mind, something he could lean against without thinking it would fall away. When he'd talked, she'd listened, most times without comment, but when she had questioned him, on what he'd thought and what he'd felt, those questions had changed his perspective on events in a way he hadn't really found on his own. Or with anyone else.

The question had been plaguing him for a long time. He wanted her take on it, needed it. Someone objective, someone who saw the bigger picture. Someone who wouldn't paint it rosy when maybe, maybe it wasn't.

"Ellie?"

"Mmmm?" She opened her eyes, rolling back onto her elbow to look into his face.

"You think the angels were calling the shots when Cas pulled me out, don't you?" he asked, clearing his throat when the words came out a little higher than he'd expected.

"I don't know," Ellie said, the small crease appearing between her brows. "Six months ago, a year ago, I'd've said yes, for sure. Now –"

"Now? What?"

"Something pulled you and Sam out of that convent, Dean," she said. "The angels didn't."

"You sure about that?" he asked, propping his head against his hand, his expression uncertain.

"Lucifer wanted Sam, right there," she told him flatly. "Killing you probably wasn't allowed, even by the devil, since you're Michael's vessel, but Ruby followed her orders and something got you two out of there."

When Cas had told him, back in Pontiac, that God had work for him to do, he'd been stunned and … yeah … he'd been scared. That spotlight was too big, too bright for him. He wasn't anyone special. Then he'd found out that the angels, some of them, maybe most of them, were dirty and that hadn't been a surprise, but it'd been another shock. Tessa had told him, straight out, that there were no second chances. And Ellie had told him that most of the angels believed God was dead.

He knew he wasn't. _Somewhere on earth_, Joshua had said. _Keeping out of it_. And everything he'd thought had been turned upside down, yet again.

"Why would God choose me?"

She didn't answer him immediately and he turned his head to look at her, feeling her hesitation.

"You mean aside from the obvious fact that he considers you the right person for the job?" she asked him.

"That's exactly it … I'm not," he said quietly. "There's nothing special about me. I've done – I've done a helluva lot worse things than most people."

"And you've done a lot more good than most people ever would or could," she countered, her exhale a whisper over his shoulder. "How many people do you know of who have spent their lives trying to help people? Not doctors, nurses, firemen and police – they get paid for their altruism, and most of the time, they get to have a life as well, a life with friends and family. I mean people who do it on their own dime, purely because they have to?"

He wasn't sure how to answer that. Everything he looked back on, everything he thought he'd done to help, didn't seem to stack up too well against the mistakes he'd made. "I know a lot of hunters that do."

"Do you? Because most of the hunters I've met are driven by a combination of revenge and bloodlust, trying to make a retribution for an event that put them on the path without ever considering the victims of the creatures they hunt," Ellie responded, a very faint caustic edge to her voice. "Their body counts sometimes even exceed that of the monsters they've slain."

He wanted to refute that, wanted to tell her it wasn't true, that there were a lot of hunters out there who were just trying to keep the evil down, but he couldn't. He knew too many hunters who fit that profile.

"And how many do you know who have given up their own needs, their own dreams, to keep helping people? How many have sacrificed themselves for another?" she continued, pushing herself upright on one arm. "That's why you were chosen, Dean, it's who you are."

* * *

><p>Ellie couldn't see the details of his face in the darkness. She didn't know if what she was saying was getting through to him, or if he was fighting what she was telling him with all the self-loathing at his disposal.<p>

It didn't seem to matter that he kept on fighting despite the personal toll took from him. He didn't seem to recognise that he always put himself between danger and an innocent. To him, he did it because he knew no other way. The idea that it was heroic never appeared to occur to him. John Winchester had clearly never told his son that a hero was someone who kept fighting, through their fear, through their pain, through their despair – not someone who didn't feel those things.

He wouldn't ever give up. That wasn't in his nature. But he would torture himself, would accept the responsibility for all that he'd done and all that'd been done to him, bearing it with a guilt he didn't think he could find atonement for, a guilt that was overloading everything he was. And that, she thought, was the problem.

"Everything I've done, the sacrifice – all of it; it turned to crap, Ellie. It made things worse, not better," he said, shaking his head.

Letting out her breath softly, Ellie shifted on the bed, kneeling beside him. "When you made that deal, Dean, the very act of your sacrifice should've voided the contract with Lilith – with Hell," she told him. "That was how it used to work, when the angels were following the Word."

"What?" He pushed himself higher against the pillows behind him.

"Self-sacrifice, to save another, was always the highest thing God valued," she said. "It was how your mother was able to remain in Lawrence, despite the fact that she made a deal."

His eyes widened a little, and she shook her head at him. "By the time your father made the deal for you, the angels were already controlling most of what happened in Hell. It's even possible that Azazel knew of those plans, since he knew what it would take to get you to step up, but I don't think he did."

Sam hadn't been very clear on what'd happened when he'd died, but he'd remembered the demon's delight just before Dean'd killed it.

"You shouldn't have been in Hell to begin with," she continued, glancing around the silent room. "And the angels – Penemue said that – you – you weren't handled the same as any other soul."

Something passed across his features, too fast for her to be able to interpret. She controlled the internal shiver she felt, remembering the Watcher's recounting of what he'd heard the angels talking about. Dean had been the dedicated, number one target of Hell's most accomplished torturer. They'd wanted him broken and Alastair'd all the information he'd needed to do it.

He tipped his head back against the wall as his shoulders slumped.

"Yeah, and in Hell, I broke the first seal on Lucifer's cage," he said bitterly. "How was that a smart move? How did that work for the greater good?"

She thought he'd been close, for a moment, to understanding, but he clung to his guilt, and she'd known it would take a lot more than a single conversation to prise him free of it. Looking at him, seeing the jut of his cheekbone, the sinuous curve of his jaw and the long line of his throat, outlined in the faint reddish light from the clock on the nightstand, she wondered if he would ever be free of it.

"From the moment that Raphael realised that your father would never break, that was predestined, Dean," she told him, her tone blunt. "How you feel about Sam, how far you'll go for him, that's well known. All they had to do was lay out the bait and they knew you'd make the deal. And you had to … you could never let Sam die while you still lived."

"Yeah. They got that right, didn't they?" he said. She could hear the thickness in his throat, at the memories, and his uncertainty over what he'd decided to do. "But was it the right choice, Ellie? Should I have let him go?"

"It was the only choice for you. Right or wrong, that's irrelevant. You did what is in you to do, because that's who you are."

"That's not really comforting," he said dryly.

"Maybe not. But it's one of the reasons I think God wanted you. It's what he saw in you."

"My inability to act rationally when it comes to my family?" he asked, a derisive tone masking a deeper pain.

"Your inability to give up without going to the ropes," she corrected him. She looked at the edge of his profile, all she could see in the dim light, and drew in a deep breath. They'd skirted around this before, but she'd always let him go without pushing. This time, she had to push. He needed to get through this, at least.

"It wasn't an irrational impulse, Dean. You chose to sacrifice yourself."

* * *

><p>He felt his pulse increase slightly as a sense of anxiety grew in him. She was getting far too close to his thoughts, his fears now. They'd touched on this before, and she'd stopped then, had let it go without forcing it. He had the feeling that now, this conversation he'd started wouldn't finish until he faced up to himself.<p>

"Why?"

He glanced at her, able to make out the shape of her in the near-darkness, not much else, his gaze turning away as he wondered why he was even considering answer that.

"I –" he started, then stopped, closing his eyes as he thought back to the moment when he'd been sitting in another darkened room, looking at the body of his brother. Nothing could dull those memories, that time, for him. All those feelings, those emotions, were still there, bludgeoning him if he didn't keep them at arm's length. Flicking another glance at her, he thought that maybe it was just time he got them out.

"I couldn't believe it, at first," he said, his voice husking out a little when the moment came back easily, thick and fast and suffocating. "I felt him die, holding onto him, trying to figure out how bad he'd been hurt. I felt him take his last breath and then there was just nothin'."

He'd carried Sam's body to the nearest house, a derelict place, a few pieces of furniture still in it, and had laid his little brother on a mattress in an empty room.

"Bobby was – I was trying to deal," he continued, his throat closing up a little, remembering how he'd try to drive off the old hunter, unable to cope with his feelings with anyone else around. "I was trying to convince myself that Sam was dead, and I had to let him go."

"You know, everything I'd said to that point, the natural order and how things worked out how they should, an' all I could think of was that it wasn't right, it sure as hell wasn't natural and it should've been Sam who'd survived because he could've – he had something, something I never did."

Sam could've gone back to college, he remembered thinking. Sam could've found someone, someone like Jessica, gotten married, gotten out, been safe.

"I was talking to him," he said, clearing his throat a little. "And it – it just hit me that I was the last of them, the one who shouldn't've even been there, last one of the Winchester family standing, and that wasn't right –"

It hadn't been right and that feeling had risen like bile in his throat, choking him.

"I had one job, to protect them, to keep them safe –" He looked down, shaking his head. "And I fucked it up. Failed both of them. Failed everything. They were dead, and I was still on my feet."

Beside him, Ellie moved slightly and he shook his head, not wanting to hear what he knew she was going to say. "It wasn't just survivor guilt," he said, keeping his eyes fixed on the wall opposite. "I mean, I thought about that, later, after, and it wasn't. I – I just didn't – I couldn't see the road, anymore."

_I guess that's what I do. I let down the people I love. I let Dad down. And now I guess I'm just supposed to let you down, too. How can I? How am I supposed to live with that?_

That'd been the instant when his future had disappeared. All he could see was an empty road and no one on it but him and years and years of that stretching out in front of him.

"I was the one who was supposed to have died," he said. "And I – I couldn't –"

He stopped talking, lifting a shoulder in a shrug.

"You didn't fail them, Dean," Ellie said softly. "You just loved them."

"If I'd died when I was supposed to –"

"You said it yourself," Ellie cut him off. "Your family was being manipulated, long before you were born. Your death was never an option."

"Sam –"

"Sam loves you, Dean. He couldn't have let you go anymore than you could let him."

He shook his head stubbornly. "He could've – I thought he could've –"

"Lived a normal life? Away from all this?" she asked and he heard the disbelief in her tone.

"Yeah." He knew now how dumb that'd been, that hope, that idea.

"Why won't you let anyone close enough to love you?" Ellie's voice was so soft he barely heard her.

The question wasn't what he'd been expecting and he felt his throat close up completely, his chest suddenly constrained by a tightness that hadn't been there a moment before.

_Not. Can't. Don't. What I've done. One big deep nothing. Dead inside. Don't. Can't. Broken. Broken. Broken_. Thought and memory rushed through him, a juggernaut of despair and he closed his eyes.

"I –" He didn't know how to answer that.

_Everybody leaves you, Dean. You noticed? Mommy. Daddy. Even Sam. You ever ask yourself why? Maybe it's not them. Maybe, it's you._

That hadn't been Mary Winchester talking. It didn't matter. He'd thought the same thing himself, had felt it, down deep, where all his worst fears lived. Everyone he'd loved had been taken from him – or had left.

His earliest memories, of his mother and his father, in the house in Kansas, had been filled with love, a wall of warmth and care surrounding him that he'd taken for granted, not knowing anything else. But after she'd died … love had gotten lost, been replaced by responsibility, by knowledge of the dark and the things that hunted within it.

John Winchester had been driven from that day, obsessed, filled with a black rage against the demon who'd taken his life away. He knew that, had come to accept it. There had been no time for love, for nurturing his boys. Only the need to train them, to harden them, to make sure that they would survive, that they would know how to survive even when he was gone. Dean had watched his brother growing up in an environment that was almost devoid of love. And though he'd tried, as a child, he hadn't been able to give Sam more. The need to be strong, to be ready, had overruled everything else.

The times when he hadn't been strong, hadn't been ready, when Sam had been in deadly danger, through his own lack of attention; those times had wiped out every feeling of accomplishment, all the years of making sure that they were safe. His father's anger at those times had been terrible, but hadn't really held a candle to the bitter anger and loathing he'd felt for himself.

_I can see inside you, Dean. I can see how broken you are, how defeated. You can't win, and you know it. But you just keep fighting. Just ... keep going through the motions. You're not hungry, Dean, because inside, you're already ... dead._

The Horseman's words had hit him like a sledgehammer. He knew what hunger should've been called in him, in that being's presence. When he'd felt nothing, he'd been afraid that the Horseman had been right.

He needed love. He knew that as surely as he tried to never, ever acknowledge it. Needed it just as he needed a home, a family, the unknown feeling of being safe. Somewhere along the line he'd started to believe that he wasn't worthy of it. That it wasn't for him, wasn't something he could think to have. His father's final few words in the hospital had shaken and scared him. He'd rarely seen that light of love and pride in his father's eyes, not when they'd been turned on him, at least. He didn't know how to react to it.

That wasn't quite right either, he realised as he struggled with those memories. He'd trained himself to not want or need those things from his father, after too many years of looking for them, and seeing disappointment or mistrust.

The second he'd seen his father, lying on the floor of the hospital, he'd known. Known that his father had willingly sacrificed himself so that his son would live. He'd found it impossible to believe that John had made that sacrifice from love. When he finally did accept it, it made the guilt a thousand times worse. If one of them had to die, it should have been him. It had been his time. None of the terrible things that had happened after would have occurred if he'd died when he was supposed to, if it had been his father protecting Sam, fighting the demon.

* * *

><p>Her hand resting lightly against his shoulder, Ellie waited, feeling the rigidity in the big muscles, hearing the unevenness of his breathing. She was afraid, she could admit that to herself. Afraid he'd turn away. Afraid he'd be unable to face his past and would blame her for trying to force him into it.<p>

He'd taken responsibility for everything that'd happened and he'd blamed himself for what he thought of as failures, failures of courage, of strength. They hadn't been, but she wasn't sure of how to convince him of that.

Penemue had told her what the angels had talked of, when Dean's soul had been dragged free of the pit. Had told her of Alastair, and what the high-ranked demon had done to Dean. Had told her of Dean's capitulation, and the breaking of the seal. There were no innocent souls in Hell, she'd said to him. It hadn't mattered to him. His guilt didn't lie in what he'd done. It was in how he thought he'd felt about it. Some of what the angels had said had made it clear that Dean had been good at the job Alastair had been training him for.

But, she considered, if he'd been truly broken, demonised and remade, his soul tainted beyond redemption, he wouldn't be feeling any guilt at all. He wouldn't have come back torn apart by his anguished remorse and his conviction that he could never atone for what he'd done.

* * *

><p>Surrounded by the past, barely aware of the room or the woman beside him, Dean forced himself to look at his memories. It wasn't all pain, he knew. There'd been good times. Maybe not that many, but they'd been there.<p>

He and Sam had been through so much, had hidden so much from each other, he didn't even know for sure what his brother felt now. He was no clearer on what he felt about Sam either. They might not have been monsters. But they'd been so close to it.

Ellie'd been right, he thought. He couldn't help but try to control what happened to Sam; and Sam, for his part, automatically tried to obey his older brother. It wasn't … healthy. It wasn't what either of them wanted, not really. But the patterns of their lifetime were still dictating their actions. Was love the bond that held them together? That drove their actions? Or was it habit, etched into them, through the years of fighting together, being together? The trust that had been there was gone. Was love even possible without that bond of trust?

When he'd been raised from Hell, the memories of what he'd done had very nearly broken him again. _Carved you into a new animal_. Those memories, those things he'd done and the way he'd felt, doing them, had convinced him that he was damned and there wasn't anything he could do to change that. .

Sam had reached out to him, wanting to help, but his brother had no idea how deep those open wounds were, how they riddled his soul with an evil he couldn't undo, couldn't wipe clean. Anna's conviction that he was loved, could forgive himself, had been a pipe dream – she'd known what he had done, but she hadn't known how he had felt.

And he'd told Sam.

And he wished he hadn't.

_I enjoyed it, Sam. They took me off the rack, and I tortured souls, and I liked it. All those years, all that pain. Finally getting to deal some out yourself. I didn't care who they put in front of me. Because that pain I felt, it just slipped away. No matter how many people I save, I can't change that. I can't fill this hole. Not ever._

Sam had looked at him differently after that. Nothing big, and he hadn't really said anything – at least not when he was himself. But the difference was there. That'd been the moment when he'd known for sure. The hole inside of him, the feeling he'd become aware of when he'd cheated Death the first time, gouged out deeper and wider in his years in Hell, was what he wanted – what he _needed_ – and would never have. Famine had been right. He was dead inside.

Closing his eyes, he heard Ellie's quiet exhale by his shoulder, a tremor running through his nerves. Nothing stayed buried and there was no way out but through but he didn't know if he could face those memories, look into the cracks and crevices and see clearly what was missing, what had been broken beyond repair. He sure as shit didn't know if he could say any of it out loud, say it to someone else. Say it to …

She knew a lot of it, he thought uncomfortably. She was here, with him. What they'd done, together, there was no possibility of lying in that. He'd felt what she'd felt, an unspoken, barely acknowledged longing to be so close that only the truth could be seen. It'd lifted him higher than he'd ever been before, filled him with emotions he had no experience with, created something he didn't understand but couldn't let go.

_When you can, you have people that want to help. You are not alone. That's all I'm trying to say._


	5. Chapter 5 Confession

**Chapter 5 Confession**

* * *

><p>He hadn't been able to talk to Anna; it'd been too soon, she hadn't known him and he'd been too vulnerable, the scar tissue still bleeding, too fresh. Talking to Sam had been a bad idea. Another shiver shook through him.<p>

Pushing himself higher against the pillows behind him, he sucked in a deep breath, twisting a little to one side, away from Ellie, away from the expectant feel of her patience.

It was shame that wound around him. A suffocating shroud of shame, thick and impossible to fight his way past. He couldn't face his memories, that shame permeating every one. A congealing stain he was afraid nothing could ever remove. A stronger man wouldn't have given up. A braver man wouldn't have caved in. A better man wouldn't have done what he'd done, felt what he'd felt.

_God commanded it. Because we have work for you_ … _The angels have something good in store for you? A second chance? Really? 'Cause I'm pretty sure, deep down, you know something nasty's coming down the road. Trust your instincts, Dean. There's no such thing as miracles … Everybody leaves you, Dean_ … _You're not hungry, Dean, because inside, you're already ... dead_.

_There is no forgetting. There's no making it better. Because it is right here ... forever._

"Why are you here?" he asked, not looking at her.

"You know why I'm here."

"No," he said. "I don't." He gestured sharply around the room. "You know what I did. Why the hell would you want anything to do with me?"

* * *

><p>Ellie's gaze dropped from his barely-visible quarter profile to her hands, curled in her lap.<p>

"The angels Penemue overheard, when you were in Hell – they said you were becoming a demon," she said, wondering how much he'd listen to before he got up and walked out. "They said you revelled in the torture."

There was a long silence, and she waited, peripherally aware of the tension that radiated from him.

"They were right," he told her, his voice low and hard, filled with a tangible disgust.

* * *

><p><em>Did you leave a part of yourself down there, Dean? Or did you bring something back?<em>

She'd asked him that, in the farmhouse, after they'd saved the boy. Both, he'd thought at the time, unsure now if that was still true. Parts of him were missing, things he'd thought about himself, had believed in himself. He couldn't feel the crawling sensation anymore, that darkness that'd come in the middle of the night. He hadn't felt that since Manhattan. He didn't think it was gone, necessarily.

"If they were, why do you feel remorse for what you've done?" Ellie asked him. "Why were you afraid of torturing Alastair?"

"I –" he started to deny that, automatically, then stopped. He'd been terrified. _You ask me to open that door and walk through it, you will not like what walks back out_, he'd told Cas. He'd been sure that he wouldn't come back human. There wasn't any point to admitting otherwise.

"You came out of Hell knowing your mortality, Dean," Ellie pressed, and he felt the mattress dip a little as she drew her legs up and wrapped her arms around her knees.

"But that time didn't stop you from caring about people. It didn't blur the line between right and wrong. If anything," she continued, "It made that clearer to you. What was right. What had to be done."

_You remember when our job was helping people? Like, getting them back to their families? … Then at least he dies human! … What happens to all the people during your little pissing contest? … Destiny? Don't give me that 'holy' crap. Destiny, God's plan– it's all a bunch of lies, you poor, stupid son of a bitch! It's just a way for your bosses to keep me and keep you in line! You know what's real? People, families – that's real. And you're gonna watch them all burn? … This is simple, Cas! No more crap about being a good soldier. There is a right and there is a wrong here, and you know it._

Everything he'd done since he'd gotten out had been an attempt to make up for what he'd done down there. For the way it'd felt.

"You could've bailed, Dean," Ellie said, her voice soft. "You could've given up, not even deliberately evil, just decided it wasn't your problem … and walked away. You didn't."

"I wanted to," he told her, his voice as low as hers. "When Sam – Christ, Ellie, I wanted to."

"But you didn't."

"An' that makes it all okay?"

For a moment, she didn't answer him and he slid his gaze reluctantly sideways, trying to make out her expression in the darkness.

"You made a choice," she said. "You did what you had to do but you didn't let it all the way in. And then you tried everything you could to atone for that choice and those consequences. Does that sound like a demon to you?"

"It's not that simple." He shook his head a little, not liking the inarguability of the position she presented. "You can't just logic this away, Ellie."

"I'm not trying to," she countered quietly. "But you need to see it for what it is. Nothing more. Nothing less."

"I _broke_," he said. "That's what it was. What it is."

"You bent," she contradicted him. "You didn't break."

"I – I'm not the – not, not what you think."

"You're a good man." She shifted a little on the bed. "And you know that, somewhere, Dean. You wouldn't keep fighting otherwise."

He could see how she might've come to that conclusion. He wasn't. Wasn't that man and he could lie to her, he thought. Could keep trying to bury the darkest part of himself, and maybe she'd stay, for a while anyway. He didn't think it would be all that long. The truth had a habit of rising, one way or another, usually at the worst possible time.

But if he lied, he would never get what he thought he wanted. And if he told the truth, she would leave and he would never get what he thought he wanted. The hell kind of choice was that, he wondered bitterly?

The belated recognition that he wanted her to stay, not just for a short time, not just another short-term fling, sent a spiralling chill down his neck. He wanted, he considered slowly and for the first time, her to know it all. The worst of it. To see him as he really was. He didn't think she'd stay then, but hiding it would be worse. Her _not_ knowing would be worse. Someone had to know it all. Not just him. Not just the angel.

"No." He closed his eyes, his voice hoarse with reluctance. " Ellie …you're wrong about me."

Hell had been about breaking everything in him – everything he'd loved and cherished and been proud of – apart. There hadn't been a single moment that hadn't been devoted to dehumanisation, on every possible level.

She might've been right, that he'd held some small part of himself aside. He couldn't remember those kinds of details. He remembered pain. In every shape and form. Stripping away the things he'd liked about himself one by one, then the things he'd valued … then everything else. He didn't know when, exactly, it'd happened. When he'd forgotten almost everything about himself, his human self, lost in an agony that'd been inescapable even when he'd been left alone, when the nightmare place had done its tricks and he'd been made whole again, to suffer through the next round.

There had been very little of Dean Winchester left by the time he'd given up and taken the demon's razor in his own hand.

Grateful for the darkness of the room, he told her slowly, falteringly, about the last ten years he'd spent in Hell. What had happened. What he'd done. What he'd felt. As each word came out, he felt as if he were nailing himself into a box, one from which he would not ever be able to escape. She listened to him, making no sound in the silence between his stumbling confessions. He couldn't look at her, couldn't look at anything, his eyes tightly shut, his breathing ragged.

"I was well on my way to becoming a demon, when Cas dragged me out. And that's still here," He tapped his chest, the ache filling it making it hard to draw a breath. "Still inside of me. It won't go."

His dreams were filled with darkness, sometimes they just replayed what he'd done, sometimes he relived the agonies that'd come before. No innocent souls in Hell, she'd told him. Sam too.

This one you'll like, Dean. _The demon had whispered against his ear, both of them looking at the soul on the stone table._ Liked to torture children, to terrify them before he ripped them apart.

_The rage he felt was cleansing, roaring through in a wildfire, vaporising his pain, incinerating his thoughts._

Now, now, don't waste the opportunity, _Alastair had reproved mildly when the soul had been all but torn to pieces._ Take your time, make it last.

_Pain was a conduit from soul to soul, the demon had told him. Pain was the meat and drink of demonkind, essential and addictive, and every soul, no matter how black, could be squeezed of a little more._

_On some level that hadn't felt like him, but had, he thought, been a part of him, he'd understood that; feeling their excruciating agony through the blade of the razor, each soul he'd torn apart had fed him a little more. When the soul on the table had been at the point of destruction, its anguish beyond imagination and endurance, he felt a blast of power flow through him, burning as it went, an orgasmic wave that had filled him completely, lifting him into a state that was either ecstatic or cataclysmic, no means of telling which. The demon had been laughing._

"I c-c-can't believe that God got this right. How can I believe in forgiveness for something I wanted to do, something I enjoyed doing?"

He heard her deep sigh beside his shoulder, and felt his stomach knot up in fear.

"You were forgiven by God the moment you got off the rack, Dean," she said and the certainty in her voice shook him. "It wasn't an act of free will."

"I chose –"

He felt the huff of her breath as she leaned closer. "Unrelenting torture is not a freely made choice," she told him. "It's a decision made under duress. _Actus me invito factus non est meus actus_.The act done by me against my will is not my act."

"It wasn't against my will."

"If alternative choice had been between solitary confinement, no torture, no pain, would you have done it?" Ellie asked, her tone suddenly sharp. "Not an eternity of torment, but just nothing – if it'd been a choice between dying and getting off the rack, which would you have chosen?"

He turned his head. "My father didn't –"

Ellie cut him off, "This isn't about him, it's about you."

_Oh, damned if I couldn't break him. Pulled out all the stops, but John, he was, well, made of something unique. The stuff of heroes._

Alastair's mocking words ricocheted through his head and he felt himself shrivel, a little more, inside.

_Just not the man your daddy wanted you to be, huh, Dean?_

He wasn't. He never would be.

"You have to know what you did wrong, accept it and you have to ask for forgiveness to get redemption. And I _know_ you have, over and over. Your soul is clean – you just won't believe it," Ellie said, and the words were slow to register.

"No," he said, his voice shaking. He couldn't _accept_ that. Everything wiped clean? That couldn't be right. He didn't feel clean. It had been six months before he could face himself in a mirror after getting out of Hell. He still shaved more by feel than by sight, not wanting to meet his own eyes in any reflection.

"You're holding onto your guilt, and your shame, and you take on responsibility that's not yours to carry, trying to find a way to atone, to find a way to bury your feelings, your memories," Ellie continued, her voice hardening again, just a little.

"No." He shook his head. "It can't be –"

"Do you want to be punished? Do you need to feel like you're paying for what you did?"

"I don't _need_ to feel like this," he snapped suddenly, feeling the cracks deep down widening. "I don't _want_ to feel like –"

She moved, leaning closer to him and he felt her mouth over his, stopping his protest, her lips soft and demanding. He couldn't help the flinch that shivered through him, her arms closing around him as if she felt it too. He'd been certain that whatever it was that she'd felt for him would've been wiped out by what he'd told her, by what he'd done and even as the kiss deepened, he couldn't quite believe it, couldn't believe in it.

_Why won't you let anyone close enough to love you?_ Was she right, he wondered distantly? Was everything he'd carried, couldn't let go, some kind of weird act of retribution? For breaking. For being too weak. For surviving. For living … and for wanting?

_I'm not all here. I'm not — I'm not strong enough_. He wasn't. Not the man he'd wanted to be. Not a _good_ man. _You don't think you deserve to be saved?_ He'd wanted the angel to tell him that he did – did deserve it, could wipe out the past, his past, his mistake. But Cas had told him that God wanted something else from him and he'd figured it was a deal, maybe a way out of the dark for him.

Pulling back, Dean tried to get a handle on the hurricane of emotion that was loose and destroying everything he'd been telling himself for the last two years. Her breathing was as unsteady as his, soft, fast exhales against his jaw.

* * *

><p>His uncertainty came off him in waves, and Ellie asked softly, "Do you want to go?"<p>

"Do you want me to go?"

"No," she said, ignoring the edge in his voice. "I want you to stay."

He dragged in a deep breath. "I want to stay."

"Then what is it?"

"I don't – this isn't –"

He ducked his head away, his exhale harsh in the quietness.

She wanted to ask him what he was afraid of, but she knew that he wouldn't be able to answer that. Not now. Maybe not at all. Not being alone. Not death. Not even Hell.

There was no way she could help him with this, and she knew it. It wasn't a matter of pushing him harder, or offering a path. This was something he had to find for himself, had to want … for himself.

* * *

><p>He'd told himself, a million times, love was for chicks. For family. All tangled up with loyalty and responsibility and a sense of chivalry he'd kept deeply hidden, even from himself. Love was a pipe-dream. For other people, not for him. He knew what he was. Knew what he'd become. Knew what he'd never be. He didn't know what the emotions were, that fluxed and surged through him, didn't know why he felt a sense of something missing, all the time. He only knew he didn't feel that missing piece here. Now.<p>

A fierce and raw need to be close to someone – _no, not someone, not anyone_, just to the woman beside him – crackled through him, so intense it felt as if he were suffocating. It drove him as he turned back to her, his mouth finding hers, fingers tangling in her hair, not wanting to let go.

The kiss, ferocious and intoxicating with that yearning, swept away thought, overloading his senses, her skin against his, taste, smell and touch, and a slowly growing recognition that her response was as fiery and desperate as his. He'd thought he'd experienced every possible kind of kiss, from the sublime to the ridiculous, but this was different. As different as making love had been. As different as she was from any other woman he'd known or been with. It wrapped around him, demanding and yielding, wild and gentle, arousing and comforting, too full of contradictions to make any kind of sense. Insanely, in the midst of the maelstrom, a fragment of a quote slid through his mind … _for sure, you got to be lost to find a place that can't be found_ … he was lost alright, good and lost. Desperation mutated gradually into something else, something he didn't recognise, didn't know, but he wanted to stay lost.

* * *

><p>What the hell was he doing, he asked himself, hours or minutes later as she drew back a little, their mutually frantic need assuaged for the moment. Looking into her eyes, his throat filled and tight, a contradictory flush of arousal spread languidly through his body.<p>

She lifted a hand and he felt the light touch of her fingers against his cheek.

"You are loved, and even if you can't admit to it, you know it," she said quietly. "Sam loves you. Bobby loves you. Maybe it's hard for you to believe, but it's still true."

He couldn't see her expression, making out the sharp angle of a cheekbone, the faint reflection of her eye, lit by the dim glow of the clock against the darkness. He heard her indrawn breath.

"I love you, Dean."

Her words hung in the air, in the shocked silence in his mind.

* * *

><p>She hadn't meant it to come out that way, melodramatic and portentous, as if it were the answer to everything. Hadn't meant to say it at all, she thought, trying to see his reaction. The raw need in his kiss had been a shock and she said what she'd felt without thinking about it at all.<p>

The silence drew out between them and Ellie swallowed against a desire to fill it with something. He'd been expecting her to leave. She'd known that from the moment he'd started to talk about Hell. It'd only been an uncertain feeling, that he hadn't wanted her to go, that had overridden her fear that he'd been trying to push her away.

She could've told him that Hell, from the moment Lucifer had seen the effects of pain on the human soul, had only had one purpose. It was not there for rehabilitation. Not even for punishment. Hell was in the business of making demons. And it was the pain, burning new paths in the psyche, that created those entities of remorseless hunger.

They'd wanted to break him. To break the seal. They'd managed the latter but in the process, had strengthened Michael's vessel, without even knowing it, she thought. He felt broken but he wasn't and when the time came to face the devil, she had the feeling Lucifer was going to get the worst shock of his endless life.

Under her hand, the rigidity was leeching out of his frame, his breathing less ragged, steadying gradually.

Loving someone, no matter how much, didn't necessarily include reciprocation. And she acknowledged, only a little reluctantly to herself, while he might've needed to know that he was, it was more than likely that he wasn't ready to risk himself now. Or, possibly, ever. The thought bit into her and she shoved it aside. He hadn't wanted to leave before … she wasn't sure why but she hoped the feeling was still there.

* * *

><p>He'd never said it to anyone. And he'd never stuck around long enough for anyone to say to him. Someone not his family, at least. The moment was looping through his mind and he was vaguely aware that seconds were ticking away, without him saying anything, doing anything, but the feeling he was getting from Ellie wasn't impatience or expectation. Of anything. Focussing on her again, he realised she was just … being. Waiting for him without wanting anything from him.<p>

It was a strange feeling. One that he hadn't expected.

He felt … like … himself. Something he hadn't for a long time. A very long time, he thought, examining the feeling more closely. The shit and the crazy hadn't disappeared. But it'd receded, muffled and buffered by the way those four little words kept replaying.

"Famine …" he hesitated, wondering if he was nuts to be talking to her like this, or if it'd been more crazy to have kept it all inside for so long. "He – uh – told me I didn't get the hunger 'cause I-I – I was already dead inside."

If she was surprised by the topic, she didn't show it, her expression thoughtful as she looked at him.

"Is that what you feel?" She leaned against him and his heart accelerated a little at the way that felt, her warmth along his side. Right, he thought. It felt right.

_You can't win, and you know it. But you just keep fighting. Just ... keep going through the motions_, the Horseman had said and at the time, he hadn't been able to deny it. With what'd happened after, he couldn't find the will to pretend it wasn't at least partly true.

"Didn't matter what I did," he said, looking for a way to explain. "After Ellen and Jo died, it kept getting worse." He shook his head. "You said that I was changing things, Ellie, but I'm not. We – me and Sam – we're not even keeping up with those mothers."

"You wanted to give up?"

"I –" Had he? He didn't even know now. The failures had piled up and she hadn't been around. Hadn't been around, he thought, the connection there, at the edge of his mind. He hadn't wanted to give up, even with the prospect of facing Lilith, when she'd been there, beside him. And what the fuck did that mean?

"I thought – we thought – you were dead," he said, glancing down at her.

"Don't have much faith in my abilities, do you?"

He huffed a little. "Luck always runs out, Ellie. You were –"

She'd been gone for too long. He'd refused to believe in her death, but he realised he'd started to give up when he'd begun to think around the idea that she might not come back.

"You were MIA and nothing I did worked."

"Do you still feel like that, Dean?" she asked, shifting to look up at him.

"I don't know," he told her, more or less honestly. He didn't feel like giving up. He wasn't sure why. Or how long that would last. He couldn't look at what he wanted. Every time he did, he lost it.

"You never once asked for help for yourself," she said, and he blinked at the abrupt turn in the conversation.

"What?"

"You ask for help to fight the devil, to save Sam, or Bobby, people you care about … but never once for you."

He frowned. "Am I missing something here?"

"Yeah," she said. "Famine might've thought you dead inside, but you're not. Shut down is probably more accurate. Deliberately. So you don't have to feel. Or want. Or need anyone."

It was on the tip of his tongue to tell her that he needed people, not many, just a few. To put his back against. To trust. It wouldn't come out. The people he'd needed, the trust he'd needed, had gone, right when he'd needed them the most.

"So … I'm just supposed to ask for forgiveness and it's all goin' to be good?" he asked derisively. "That's a little too easy."

"You have to find a way to forgive yourself, Dean," Ellie told him, settling herself a little closer to him.

The scent of her hair surrounded him and he breathed it in, barely registering what she'd said. He _still_ couldn't quite believe she hadn't left. Couldn't believe in what she'd said to him. He was a little disconcerted to find that he wanted to. Wanted it more than he was really ready to admit.

Replaying her words, he closed his eyes and leaned back against the headboard. That wasn't the way he did things, he thought, a slight dread of attempting it tingeing the thought. He made mistakes; hell, he'd made a lot of them. He owned up to them, paid for them in whatever consequences they brought and then tried not to see them again. Forgiving himself … he had an idea that would mean digging deeper, seeing the things he didn't want to know.

He felt her sigh against his skin and looked down at her. The sense of peace, of home, of safety, seeped through him. It was so alien to the way he usually felt, in this situation, in any situation, he couldn't help but hope it was going to last, a little while longer, at least. If he could find a way through the booby-trapped minefield of his past, if he could find a way to … understand what'd happened, to … forgive … himself, maybe that sense, that feeling of comfort, would keep her with him longer.

He'd thought he was done making deals, but as his eyes closed, and he exhaled softly, he sent out an offer to the entity he didn't want to believe in, not thinking about it, feeling it come straight from the deepest part of him.

_Just give me this_.


	6. Chapter 6 Nascence

**Chapter 6 Nascence**

* * *

><p>The morning sunlight poured through the big windows, pale winter sunshine that barely warmed what it touched, but lit up the room.<p>

Dean woke slowly, cautiously, waiting for the hammer of a hangover to hit him. It didn't come. He opened his eyes a little, looking around the room. Even with the sunshine banishing most of the shadows, his eyes were actually functioning and he realised with a dawning delight that despite last night's consumption, he was going to escape unscathed this morning.

The other memories of the night returned more slowly and he stretched out on the bed, letting them seep into him, trickle back through conscious recall. His body lit up with the flashes of sense memory of their lovemaking, and under those welcomed recollections, the emotions that had broken over him rose up again. He couldn't define them, didn't know what exactly they were, only that they were powerful and reached too deeply into him, constricting his chest and throat for no reason he could figure, filling him with a contradictory combination of hope and doubt.

He pushed them away with difficulty, and concentrated on what had happened later. It was going to take him days, he realised, more likely weeks, to understand that conversation, to feel his way slowly through the implications and ramifications. That recognition was accompanied by a feeling of unease. He would've preferred to have buried the memories forever, given a choice.

What she'd said to him, the way it had felt, the almost unrecognisable hope that had risen in him, all those things were still there, more feeling than memory or thought. But one thing had changed, really changed. That emptiness he'd felt, the hole that Famine had seen … that had gone.

He could vaguely hear Ellie's voice from the other room, a conversation she was either having with herself or to someone on the phone, since he couldn't hear anyone else.

_I love you, Dean._

Rolling over, he stared at the wall opposite and tried to shut out the irrational surge of hope, of belonging and peace and incomprehensible comfort that memory brought with it. He couldn't quite make himself pretend that it might've been a mistake, that she was somehow missing something about him. He knew her well enough to know that wasn't a possibility. It still hurt, in a strange, warming way. Like a kid being offered something he wasn't sure he was allowed to have.

He'd been resigned, he'd thought, to not having anything of his own. Resigned to being alone, to a lifetime job of protecting others and not looking at what he'd wanted for himself. It was possible that she'd been right, that he'd used what he'd done – what he'd felt – to ensure that he never tried for anything else … or wanted … or needed.

Had anything really changed, he wondered? Outside this room, the world was the same as it'd been, Lucifer and Michael searching for Sam and him, the Apocalypse countdown ticking down, more and more people caught in the cross-fire between the angels and the end of days looming ever closer. Even if they could find the remaining Horsemen, they were just another two of the seals that the angels would break on their way to the final confrontation. Killing them wouldn't stop the juggernaut approaching. They needed to figure out how to stop the angels before the final confrontation. Something his brother had said came back to him. _He needs my consent_.

Lucifer was still an angel. And angels could be killed.

For once, the impending apocalyptic scenario didn't drag him down, didn't make him feel useless and helpless and unable to see a way forward – for anyone. For the first time in quite a long time, he realised slowly, he was thinking of solutions to the problems, instead of wallowing in the problems. Glancing at the closed bedroom doors, he debated asking her if she'd found out anything else about the Horsemen or the end game. She'd tell him, he thought. If she had. And he found himself not wanting to think about the problems. She was here. Alive. Now.

Stretching out slowly and deliberately, one hard-used muscle after another, he held back a smile at the heavy looseness in his body, his unfamiliarity with that complete lack of tension taking him a few more seconds to register fully. The grey fog of despair that'd driven him to the bar the previous evening had gone, he realised at the same time. He'd been living with a sense of futility for so long, he wasn't sure if it was really not there anymore or had just been buried temporarily. They might be running blind, he thought, might be ducking and dodging Fate, but for the first time in several months, a feeling of purpose returned to him, an idea that if they could just buy enough time, there'd be a solution to all of it.

In the meantime, he decided, looking up as the glass door opened and Ellie walked in, this was his time, no outside world, no interruptions, no monsters or angels or demons, and he'd be damned if he was going to waste it.

"How you doing?"

He couldn't help the smirk. "Good. Really good."

"Breakfast will be up in about thirty minutes," she said, crossing the room to the bed. "You hungry?"

"Starving," he agreed instantly. "Long breakfast order?"

"Santos called," she told him, sitting on the edge. "He's been updating his library again."

He felt a guilty flush at the name of the hunter, not so much Santos as the instant recall of the man's daughter. Flicking a fast, sideways glance at her, he saw her knowing smile.

"Mariana sent her regards," she said, the smile widening as his gaze cut away again.

"I – uh – that –"

"Dean," Ellie cut him off lightly, getting to her feet and letting the soft, white robe fall. "Not exactly a newsflash."

Nodding, the discomforting feeling of having been found out – and Ellie not appearing to feel the slightest bit of jealousy about it – warred for a moment with a rising arousal, losing rapidly as he let his gaze drift over her. The fevered desperation of the previous night was gone, not entirely but mostly. He wanted to feel her and be in her and he wanted to take his time.

"Uh, okay … then. C'mere."

* * *

><p>God, he could get used to this, he decided, rolling over and watching her sit up, lift her arms and stretch upwards, milky light from the windows gleaming over smooth skin, drawing not the impression of vivid flame from her hair, the way bright sunlight did, but a muted glow, embers of a fire.<p>

He'd never met a woman who could look so different, from one circumstance to the next. When she was working, even when they'd been comparing notes on hunts, her face was … not cold, he thought, frowning a little as he tried to recall those occasions … focussed, maybe. Expressionless almost. All her concentration on the problem. Belatedly, he realised he never thought of her as being female, particularly, when they were on a job. She'd been a professional. Like him. Dressed up, like she'd been in the big hotels, she'd looked older – sophisticated, a woman who'd made him feel like some kind of country bumpkin, but hours later, in a tee shirt, her face bare and scrubbed, hair half-loose, she seemed to drop a decade without effort. When she laughed, it was with the unselfconscious enjoyment of a child … when she was angry, the emotion sparked and swirled around her like a physical field … when she smiled, in a certain way, in any way, he didn't want to stop looking.

"Stop smirking," she said, without looking at him, and he grinned in response, tucking his arms behind his head and stretching out along the length of the bed.

"I'm not," he told her. "Just enjoying the view. You have no idea how long –"

He cut himself off. There were some things no one, no matter how close, needed to know.

She turned and looked at him over her shoulder as she reached across the foot of the bed for the white robe. "Was that a lack of time or lack of interest?"

Shrugging, he said, "Both. Busy few months."

_Busy_. That was one euphemism for messed up, not sure if the best choice was being apart from Sam or being with him. Not sure of anything. The entire mindset just didn't really lend itself to romance. Or even much-needed escape. Not if he had to make any kind of effort.

He didn't really want to ask but it came out anyway. "What about you?"

She snorted. "Must have been too distracted to think of it."

The doorbell rang and she stood, belting the robe around her. "That'll be breakfast."

"Ellie," he said. She turned back to him, waiting.

He didn't know what he wanted to say. Didn't know what he could say. "Nothing," he said finally, shaking his head.

The look she gave him was speculative, but she turned away, heading for the door.

* * *

><p>Pushing his empty plate to one side, Dean had a feeling, from the indulgent glances Ellie was giving him, that he still had a faint smile on his face. He ducked his head as he picked up his coffee.<p>

He was entitled, he decided. It'd been another new experience, this morning after. Long and slow and as drawn out as they both could stand, filled with unexpected peaks and endless, pulse-less moments of tormentingly sweet pleasure that'd made the culmination last a helluva lot longer than he'd thought possible. He was going to have to redefine his ideas of what constituted unbelievable sex, he thought, looking back at her as he swallowed another mouthful.

"What happened in Alaska?"

Ellie sipped her coffee, looking at him over the rim of the cup. "Nothing special. It was just a long, slow business," she said, glancing at the window. The sun had disappeared behind a thickening low cloud cover, leaving a directionless, flat, silver light that seemed to throw no shadows.

"And I was careless. Too tired to think properly," she added, rubbing the thin scar on her temple absently.

The combination of the admission and the evasiveness in her answer piqued his curiosity. He'd never seen her careless. She was meticulous about detail, thought of every contingency, every possible outcome to every possible action. It didn't ring true. And there was a shadow behind her eyes, some memory that was haunting her. He knew about those. He had a lot of those himself. He wanted to know what had happened, what had caused that shadow, but he knew that she was similar to him in that respect, she didn't liked to pushed.

Of course, he thought a minute later, he could wait till doomsday before she'd tell him if he didn't ask.

"You're not going to tell me, are you?" he said finally.

Glancing back at him, she shrugged, mouth curving into a half-smile. "It's boring. I'm okay, I'm alive. The monster's dead."

"Right." He looked down at his cup.

She'd told him to ask what he wanted to know, and he had. And he still didn't know. He wondered if she was trying to keep him from worrying, or if it had just been one of those long hunts. She'd been gone for seven months. Everyone else had thought she was dead. He'd been scared she was dead, but had refused to believe it.

The scar on her temple. The claw marks from her breast to her hip. They were fresh. Something must have happened.

"If Pestilence was field-testing a new virus, something that changes –" Ellie said, picking up a segment of fresh orange.

"No." Dean shook his head as he cut her off. "Not today. No apocalypse. No Horsemen. No Lucifer. No angels. No demons."

Lifting a brow, Ellie looked quizzically at him. "You sure about that?"

"This is – it's – it's a vacation, dammit," he said, not sure if that's what he meant. "No shop talk."

"Alright," she agreed, biting into the orange. "What do you want to talk about?"

"Who said I wanted to talk?"

"Are you trying to impress me?" she asked, eyes wide and guileless.

"Are you impressed?" he countered, his heart accelerating a little. He seemed to have recovered the stamina and enthusiasm he'd had at eighteen.

"Very."

The laughter in her eyes had gone and he swallowed against a flush of heat that spiralled through his body, his voice slightly higher than usual as he said, "Yeah, well, sometimes I impress even myself."

That she got the reference was apparent in the wide grin she gave him, but she didn't top it with the next line, leaning back in the chair casually.

"Your phone's off."

"Didn't want any interruptions."

"What about Sam?"

His brows drew together. "He's a big boy, he can take care of himself for a couple of days."

"Wouldn't want you distracted," she said. "Not paying attention to what you were doing, if you were, um, you know, worried about him."

"Never happen."

"I might take a shower."

"Now, you're talking."

* * *

><p>"How'd you meet Bobby, anyway?" Dean asked, a couple of hours later, lying back on the bed, watching her as she dried her hair.<p>

Ellie lifted the towel from her hair, flicking it back. "I was in San Francisco, trying to find a medieval reference to a demon," she said, dropping the towel over the back of a chair and sitting down. "I found a researcher. Actually, she specialised in dragon mythology, but she knew the period really well and he was there too."

At first, she remembered, she'd thought the man was another researcher. "He was in a suit, hair all slicked down and beard trimmed, and I thought he was a professor."

"Bobby?"

She laughed, shaking her head. "Then I realised what he was really there for was to hit on the researcher."

"You're kidding me." Dean paused as he reached for his jeans, staring at her.

"Nope," Ellie said. "He needed info as well, but there was something between them."

"And?"

"And … we both kind of realised that we were after information that normal people wouldn't be asking for, at the same time," she continued, finger combing her hair and looking at him. "He followed me to my hotel and gave me the third degree and I convinced him that I was just as bonafide as he was."

She hadn't seen him again until nearly a year later, after Michael had been taken. By then, the information Dr Visyak had given her on the demon had led her to Florida and she'd met Ray.

"I asked Ellen about him when I got some information on demon signs, and went to his place to pass on what I'd found. Figured it was just courteous." Getting up and walking around the bed, she pulled clean clothes from her bag and started dressing. "Since then, there've been a few things that he needed to know, needed to pass on to the other hunters he knows."

"Huh," he said, going to the fridge and pulling a couple of beers out. "He tell you about us?"

"Some things, yeah," Ellie confirmed, looking up to take the beer he offered. "Told me he'd looked after you and Sam when you were kids, but he had a falling out with your father."

He turned away, going to the table. "Yeah. You could put it like that."

Bobby had told her that John had been in a state when he'd arrived that day. Had been driving for god-knew how many hours. Had come straight from Ellen's after taking Bill's body home. He'd told her that if he'd been thinking straight, he never would've pushed the man that day. He'd regretted it. Regretted the boys leaving and not returning until they were men.

Watching him as he sat down and swallowed a mouthful of the cold beer, his gaze fixed to the window, she wondered if Bobby had talked to him about what'd happened that day. Dean had read Jim's journal, after she'd told him about it. Knew what'd happened. Had told Ellen to read it as well. Knowing the dry account of what John had done wasn't the same as hearing Bobby's side of it, she thought.

He turned to look at her. "So, uh, this flashy school you went to in Boston …" he said, and Ellie ducked her head slightly to hide her smile.

It wasn't that he was the world's slowest processor of information, at least of the emotional kind, but he must've been among them. It'd taken her awhile to realise that a change of topic wasn't a shut down. He just needed a bit of time to think through, then he'd raise it again when he was ready.

"… was that where you learned all the different languages?"

"No," she answered, sipping at her beer. "I studied French and German at school, but I went Europe when I was sixteen and got a kind of a crash course. That was the modern languages, of course."

He cocked a brow at her. "Of course."

"The ancient ones took longer," she told him, giving him a half-smile.

"When the hell you find time to hunt?"

It was a good question, she thought. The last few years had gone by in a blur of rushing from place to place, learning, doing, reading, researching, squeezing the days of their hours to find the people who knew what she needed to know.

"I haven't done much else since … since Michael died," she said, forcing herself past the habitual hesitation. She saw his attention sharpen a little on her and sighed inwardly. She didn't talk about it, not if she could help it. But she'd told him to ask, and she had the feeling that this time, he would.

"How'd you meet him?"

"I met him in Boston, not all that long after I got back from being overseas," she said, looking at the bottle in her hand, her thumbnail picking at the label unconsciously. "My first attempt at hunting. I told you about the vampire, right? There were some deaths in the city, and I thought I had it all worked out. If Michael hadn't been hunting it too, I'd be dead."

The vampire had moved so fast she'd never even seen it. Just smelled the scent of rot, rotting flowers and rotting flesh, swirling around and then the trickle of blood as it'd run down her neck. Just a scratch. Just proof that she was so far out of her league, she might as well have been dead already.

"He – he told me I was a suicidal idiot," she admitted, one side of her mouth curving up derisively. "I asked him to teach me."

"And he agreed."

She glanced at him. It hadn't been a question, exactly, his voice flat, evidence of his disapproval. "Yeah. I know. I didn't think about it at the time, and later … later I knew why, but it was too late."

They'd become lovers, she couldn't remember exactly how long after, maybe a year. She didn't think that love had been involved; it hadn't been even close to the way she felt for the man sitting across from her now. But they'd trusted and relied on each other, had shared most things. They'd been a good team. Until she'd let him down.

"If he hadn't agreed, I probably wouldn't have survived," she pointed out quietly. "He introduced me to a lot of people, and we spent a lot of time on the move. He had dozens of contacts, people who aren't hunters but who sort make their livings on the fringes, knowing things."

"Like your geek friend?"

She shook her head. "No, Ray got caught up when a demon broke through a gate. He learned like I did, fast and dirty. He's brilliant but kind of obsessive."

How to explain to him about Katherine and Seb, she wondered? She would have to take him to meet them. And Fionnula and Iain, Kasha and Yure, Patrick, Tatiana … and John, if he ever turned up again. They would be able to help. If there was time. If the angels gave them time.

* * *

><p>Dean parked the Impala outside of the room at the motel, seeing the lights on through the thin curtains.<p>

They'd had room service for lunch as well as breakfast, the day getting colder as it had lengthened, and he'd decided to grab some burgers for their dinner, unconsciously craving saturated fats and salt. Stopping at the motel on impulse, he was vaguely aware of the subconscious need to check on Sam, aware too that for the first time, he was irritated by it.

His brother looked up, brow crinkling up as he walked in.

"What are you doing here?" Sam asked. "Thought you were with Ellie? She left already?"

Shaking his head, Dean closed the door. "No, I'm going back, I - I just wanted to see if you, uh, had any new info?"

Sam snorted disbelievingly. "Your phone was off, man."

"Yeah … well."

It'd been the tacit understanding that he left his phone off if he didn't want to be interrupted. Not that there'd been that many occasions when he'd actually done it. At least, not for more than a couple of hours.

"No, nothing new," Sam said. "You alright?"

"Yeah, good," Dean answered, looking distractedly around the room. "Just making a dinner run."

"I've already eaten." Sam gestured expressively at the take out containers on the table. "I'll send a message if I find anything."

Dean nodded, his gaze moving restlessly from the laptop to the door.

"Dean, we're invisible, this place is warded with everything I could think of," Sam continued. "_Nothing_ is going to find us. You don't have to worry about me – or anything else."

"Yeah," Dean agreed, turning to look at him. "No, you're right. Just checkin' in, you know."

"Yeah, well, don't waste the time you've got," Sam advised, and Dean focussed on him, seeing his brother's slight smile. "Unless it's not going …?"

"What?" he asked, then shook his head. "Uh, no, that's not – it's – uh …"

He trailed off, not wanting to talk about how it'd been, not even able to talk about it, not yet.

"It's – it's all good."

"Good."

* * *

><p>Sam watched him walk out, his gaze drifting back to the laptop's screen as the door closed and he heard the black car's engine rumble to life.<p>

He hadn't been entirely truthful about what he'd found. Lucifer was playing merry hell with the eastern seaboard, violent storms and out-of-seasons hurricanes, but there wasn't anything they could do about that. He glanced back at the door, wondering about his brother's distracted state of mind.

Dean'd seemed … uncertain, he thought, of what he should be doing. He realised he hadn't seen him like that before, torn between two things. He hadn't been surprised, really, about the drop-in, but seeing his brother's impatience to be gone, from the moment he'd walked in, that'd been a surprise.

When they'd gone to Cape Girardeau about the truck thing, he'd thought his brother had still been in love with Cassie, unable to help noticing how they were together. He'd seen them watch each other, sneaking fast glances when the other wasn't looking, seen Dean's tension, at least, until the evening he hadn't returned to the motel room. When they'd left, he'd realised that whatever feelings Dean'd had for the sharply spoken journalist, they weren't enough to keep him there. There'd been a sense of relaxation in his older brother when they'd driven out of the town, of something put to rest, he'd thought at the time. He hadn't been able to reconcile that with his earlier certainty that Dean'd wanted to stay.

That feeling hadn't been in his brother just now, he considered. Something had changed, something big. The shadows that had been haunting his brother's eyes for the last few months hadn't been there. The humming tension hadn't been there either. Maybe that'd gone just because she'd turned up, he thought, alive and in one piece. Dean hadn't admitted anything over the last six months, but he'd've had to have been blind not to see the way his brother's face had closed up every time he'd tried Ellie's numbers and gotten no response. His brother had never been much good at lying to his family, and it'd been easy to see that worry, on top of everything else that'd been going on.

But the rest … he wasn't sure. The despair hadn't been there, he realised.

_But I just can't keep pretending that everything's all right. Because it's not. And it's never going to be. You chose a demon over your own brother—_

Sam swallowed as that memory came back to him. It'd started there, Dean unable to understand what he'd done. Hell, looking back at the way everything'd gotten so out of control, moving so fast and no time to think, he wasn't sure he understood how he'd gotten to that point. He'd thought – he'd hoped – his brother had found a way to get past it, then they'd lost Ellen and Jo … and the Colt, and in Emporia the only way he'd been able to save himself and his brother had been draining the demons. Since then, nothing had gone right.

Until … maybe … now.

In some ways, his older brother was a straightforward guy, an open book. Dean saw most things in black and white, reacted instinctively, planned logically, fought with everything he had, holding nothing back. But there were things about him, things that he'd never been able to figure out – or predict – and the way he was with people – some people – was one of them. Trust was an issue he'd never really thought about, until it was too late. He'd had his brother's trust, foundation-deep, his whole life, and he hadn't seen – hadn't realised – that Dean had been relying on that completely. It was – had been – he thought, what his brother had leaned against, what had given him the strength to keep fighting, even when the fight seemed futile.

Trust. Loyalty. Understanding. He'd failed all three. Had broken his trust, shattered his loyalty and made a mockery of understanding the few times Dean'd opened his heart and soul and let some of the pain out.

_You know why I didn't tell you about Ruby, and how we're hunting down Lilith? Because you're too weak to go after her, Dean. You're holding me back. I'm a better hunter than you are. Stronger, smarter. I can take out demons you're too scared to go near. You're too busy sitting around feeling sorry for yourself. Whining about all the souls you tortured in hell. Boo hoo. _

It'd been the toxin from the siren, he'd told himself. Had told Dean that too. He didn't believe it and he didn't think his brother did either. The siren's venom had opened his mouth but what'd come out had been how he'd felt. He could blame Ruby, blame the demon blood coursing through his veins. Those were just excuses too. He hadn't been able to imagine or understand what going to Hell had done to his brother. He hadn't been able to deal with it or with Dean's close-lipped stoicism. Or with the things he'd been telling himself, the justifications for what he was doing, the lying, the going behind Dean's back … none of it.

Dean needed someone to trust. Someone who wouldn't throw his rare confessions back at him. Someone he could rely on. He didn't think that someone could be him. At least, not yet. Maybe not for a while. He had his own figuring out to do. But, he thought, looking back at the door, maybe there was someone like that for his brother. Someone who'd never let him down, who'd fought as hard and as unyieldingly as Dean did to change the way fate – or Heaven – or Hell – was playing them all.

She was regarded by most of the people he'd met who knew her, at acquaintance level at least, to be a bitch, but he'd never seen that, not once in the three years since they'd met her. Decisive and intelligent, she wasn't in the slightest bit arrogant and she knew her limitations, her weaknesses and her strengths, with the kind of brutally honest objectivity he wished he'd had. He'd glimpsed the things she kept hidden, once or twice, since they'd met her, and he'd seen her in pain. She wasn't heartless, but like his brother, she didn't let much out to anyone else.

And he'd seen what she'd done for Dean. Seen how far she'd gone. That the plan had failed didn't change the incredible efforts she'd made, trying to save him. He'd thought back then there was a depth of feeling under the cool, offhand excuses she'd made for those efforts. She'd never admitted it.

Dean hadn't talked about Manhattan, not much anyway. He hadn't needed to. Sam could see that something had changed in him, something that his brother wouldn't necessarily acknowledge, but that'd come out, in the low-level anxiety he'd shown when they hadn't been able to reach Ellie; in the dreams he'd heard from the other bed in their shared, flea-pit rooms. Dean's nightmares had gone, for a while, at least, replaced by dreams where he'd talked often in his sleep, dreams that, mostly, his brother hadn't wanted to wake from.


	7. Chapter 7 Shattered

**Chapter 7 Shattered**

* * *

><p>Sam rubbed his fingers over his forehead, wondering why it'd taken his brother so long to see what'd been right in front of him. Of course, he considered, most of the time, Ellie hadn't been right in front of him. She'd been hunting on her own. Missing in action.<p>

When he'd seen her, standing at the motel room door, looking a little tired as she'd smiled up at him, he'd been shocked. For the second time.

He and Bobby had thought she'd died. Bobby'd told him a month ago that no one had heard from her, though Jeb and his crew knew about the monster in Alaska she'd gone after. Bobby had drawn him aside and had reluctantly told him that Laney had called, four months after Ellie'd left Manhattan. The diminutive blonde hunter'd said they'd taken a flight over what was left of the vulcanology team's camp and there'd been nothing there, nothing left, the team's plane scattered in pieces over the ground. She'd thought Ellie hadn't made it.

"_How you doing, Sam?" she'd asked as he'd stared at her, and he'd blinked, stepping back to let her in._

"_Me? What the – what happened to you? Where've you been? We thought you were dead!" he'd sputtered, closing the door behind her._

"_Mmm. Took me awhile to get home, that's all," she'd told him, her face expressionless as her gaze had moved around the room. "Where's Dean?"_

_That'd brought him back to the present. "Probably in the corner of the nearest bar," he'd told her. "Things – things haven't been great."_

"_What happened?"_

_He'd had no idea of where to start. There'd been too much. Too much to explain. He'd shaken his head and turned away._

"_You alright, Sam?" she'd asked, walking around the table to look at him._

No, he'd wanted to say. He was a long way from being alright. Four days in Bobby's panic room had taken the edge from the craving he'd felt for the blood, but it'd come with a high cost. Hallucinations. Physical pain. Agonising pain. His mind torturing him for hour after hour with what he'd done, alternating with the same rationalisations he'd come up with the first go 'round. Bullshit, all of it, he'd realised when he'd staggered out.

He'd seen his brother standing there, his face taut and his body tense, braced for the recriminations and his anger, and Sam'd felt everything crash to the floor at his feet, all his assumptions, all his justifications, just falling away at the sight of his brother's poorly hidden fear.

He was angry that Dean'd once again taken the big brother road and made a decision for him. But he couldn't blame him for it, not this time. That craving, that itch, became unbearable unless he fed it, and there'd been times when he'd felt weaker, losing strength day by day. Some of what he'd said to himself, in the iron room, had been true. The mistakes he'd made, the choices he'd made, they hadn't been right and they hadn't come from a desire to save the world. That'd been the shiny rationalisation he'd pasted over the top of them.

It'd been easy to believe Ruby, easy to ignore Dean, because what he'd wanted was the power.

Exhaling in frustration, Sam pushed the chair back from the table and got to his feet, going to the small bar fridge and pulling out a beer. He knocked the top off and tipped it up, the cold, gentle bubbles soothing his throat.

Admitting that to himself had been hard. Not as hard as looking at the consequences of his actions, consequences for himself – and for his brother.

Ellie was even harder to fathom than Dean, he thought, walking slowly back to the table and sitting down. Too young for the experience she had. Too pragmatic for the things he'd seen her do. Too hidden for all he believed she'd only ever told him the truth. She'd seen – and had understood – long before he had – that he'd only ever been the bait. Demon powers had been no match for centuries of manipulation. His pride had done most of Ruby's work for her.

_No. It wasn't the blood. It was you ... and your choices. I just gave you the options, and you chose the right path every time. You didn't need the feather to fly, you had it in you the whole time, Dumbo! I know it's hard to see it now... but this is a miracle. So long coming. Everything Azazel did, and Lilith did. Just to get you here. And you were the only one who could do it._

He dragged his thoughts away from that memory, and all the emotions it brought with it.

Dean had a chance for something different with the red-haired hunter. Something completely different, he thought. Someone to trust. Someone to lean on. Someone he could talk to … vent the poisons of everything that'd happened to him before they killed him … and just maybe get it clear for himself. He wasn't sure if she could help his brother through all of it, past and present, but hell, there were no guarantees of anything in this life. Not even, it seemed, death.

* * *

><p>Opening the door, juggling two bags of take-out, keys and a six-pack, Dean muttered a curse as the key refused to come out of the lock and his sharp, impatient yank on it slammed the edge of the door into his temple.<p>

"You alright?" Ellie asked, appearing beside him and taking the six-pack and bags of food from his arms. He jiggled the key and pulled it out, giving it a final scowl as he shut it and rubbed at the smarting wound.

He glanced at the open laptop as he followed her to the kitchen. "Thought we agreed, no work this weekend?"

"Not work," Ellie told him, setting the bags on the counter and passing him the beer. "Just checking in with some contacts."

"That's work," he argued, putting the six pack in the fridge and grabbing the ice-cube tray.

"No, it's being social. There's a difference."

"Tuh-may-toe, toh-mah-toe," he threw back, not even sure of where he'd heard that line. Had it been in a song?

She snorted and took the tray from him, cracking a half dozen of the cubes free and wrapping in them in a hand towel. "You always this crabby when you visit your brother?"

He took the wrapped ice from her automatically, his eyes widening. "How'd you –?"

"Doesn't take two hours to grab burgers and fries," Ellie said, opening the sacks and pulling out the foil-wrapped food. "Besides, it's probably safer to check in person than use the phones, right now."

"What? Why?"

"If angels are energy," she said, setting the food onto plates and getting a bottle of ketchup from the kitchenette. "And radio waves are energy, how much difficulty do you think Heaven would have in eavesdropping on your conversations?"

"You think they are?" he asked, slightly stunned at the idea. The flow of energy in its different variations hadn't occurred to him.

"I don't know," Ellie said, passing him a plate and carrying her own to the table. "Just seems like if they really can't see you any other way, they might try it."

"Awesome."

"How is he?"

He sat down and reached for the sauce, spreading it liberally over his food. "He's okay. He was – uh – working."

"Did he talk to you – about the cravings, I mean?" she asked.

Dean shook his head. Sam hadn't said anything at all. "No."

He swallowed the mouthful and looked at her. "I thought he would, when we let him out of the panic room," he continued. "Thought he'd ream me a new one for doing that to him – again. But he just slept for about twelve hours and then it was –" He hesitated, remembering the next day. "Then it was like nothing had happened."

"That worries you?"

"Everything worries me," he told her, his voice a little sour. "Everything that's – everything I thought I had, thought I could trust in with Sam, that's gone. And I still don't know if we can ever get it back. It doesn't feel like it."

"Maybe you're not supposed to get it back?" she said. "Maybe this is where you do something different."

He paused mid-chew, staring at her. "Just give up on him?"

"No," Ellie said, shaking her head. "Let him be who he is. And be who you are."

"Again, without the touchy-feely mumbo-jumbo?"

Her mouth twisted up in a slightly derisive smile as her gaze dropped to her plate.

"Your whole life has been about protecting Sam, being his guardian, Dean." She looked up at him, one brow lifting. "You've made his decisions for him, chosen his path as much as he has. What about what you want?"

"I –" He stopped, not knowing what to say to that. He wanted … what he wanted … aside from stopping the archangels from decimating the planet … he wanted …

"You still want a normal life, Dean?"

Did he? He didn't know. He wanted to be out of the firing line, sometimes at least. He wanted to be able to get back to what he did best, no more Heaven and Hell issues, no more being pushed and pulled and told what to do and when to do it.

Glancing at her, his gaze dropped when it met hers, the peculiar flux of emotion fluttering along his nerve endings again. Standing in the motel room, looking around at its blandness, talking distractedly to Sam, he'd wanted to leave almost as soon as he'd arrived, wanted to be back here. Not just because Sam'd been looking for the angels, he thought.

"What's a normal life, anyway?" he hedged, finishing his burger.

"Good question," Ellie said.

* * *

><p>Purple-tinted twilight filled the room and Dean arched up a little, a barely-heard groan escaping him as her hands slid over his skin. Every touch reached into him, drawing desire through his nerves and compounding it in the feel of her lips, of her tongue, reverberations cascading through him and a deep pulsing in his groin that matched the uneven beats of his heart.<p>

Arousal built too fast when she had control. He didn't tell her anything, didn't have to. It seemed like she knew where and how and for how long and he shuddered with sensation over sensation, hands crushing the sheets, so close, too close, his eyes half-open and staring sightlessly. _I want this_. The thought flashed through him, a second's coherency in the midst of no thought at all, lungs seizing with another detonation and the effort to breathe through it almost impossible.

Not, he decided, seconds later, bone-deep trembling shaking the bed under him, just because of the way it felt, the way she turned him inside-out, but because she _wanted_ to. Wanted to give. Give to him. Take the time for him.

_Fuck … _

He tried to hold on, tried to regain some minute shred of control, tried to speak, but he was so far past the point of no return he couldn't do any of it.

_I love you, Dean. _

It tipped him over, and he let go, tossed and flung and thrown, lost in the torrents that lit him in incandescence from head to foot. He couldn't figure out why she did, but he didn't doubt it.

* * *

><p>One lamp was on, casting a pool of mellow brightness over one side of the room, leaving the rest in soft, charcoal shadows. Dean leaned on his elbow, watching Ellie as she slept.<p>

She looked smaller, asleep. Defenceless and vulnerable and some emotion clutched in his chest. _Trust I seek and I find in you_ … the scrap of the lyric slipped through his mind and he closed his eyes briefly, his memory of the soft strain of guitar that accompanied it perfectly matching that emotion. Nothing else mattered.

The last twenty-four hours seemed to be completely out of time, not of his life. He felt at peace, for one thing. He couldn't remember the last time he'd felt like that. A couple of days ago he'd've laughed at the thought.

His gaze moved slowly over her features, soft and relaxed in sleep; over the curves of her body, the sight bringing a stirring of heat, one that he suppressed. For the moment, he needed to work out what was going through his head. He didn't know how to categorise or even define the feelings that were spinning him around.

Emotions that had begun months ago and had kept growing. Emotions that contradicted each other. That felt as if they reached to the depths of his soul and filled him completely. He wasn't sure what telling her – telling her _everything_ – had done. The emptiness he'd felt was gone. Not reduced or diminished but really gone. He had no idea what that meant.

Her question came back to him and he closed his eyes briefly. Did he want a normal life? He didn't have much of an idea of what those looked like, most of the input from TV shows. Did he want to stop hunting, settle down, get a job, another working joe? Have someone to come home to? Have a family?

Looking back at the woman beside him, another question snuck in. Could he have his life – with her? It wouldn't be a normal life. But it might have most of the things that comprised one. His brows knitted as he realised he couldn't imagine how it could work.

He didn't want to leave her, didn't want her to leave him. But he knew he'd have to, sooner or later. Sam would call. They'd be on the road, working another case. The unexpected stab at the thought of leaving her behind was unsettling.

He shied away from the word she'd used. He didn't know if it was. He didn't know what that felt like, not really. He thought he'd loved Cassie, but that hadn't felt like this. Nothing had ever quite felt like this.

What they'd talked about, last night – everything he'd said, everything she'd said – was still a mega traffic jam in his head. She'd told him he had to forgive himself, and he still didn't know how to do that. He knew that everything he'd done had been a part of him. Maybe he hadn't had a choice, or at least, he decided, he hadn't thought he'd had one … she saw it that way. An eternity of agony against becoming a demon. That was in him. A darkness he'd told his brother about. What he would do for his family. He'd told Sam it'd scared him, back then. It still did. He didn't see a righteous man when he looked at himself.

He'd begged for help in Sioux Falls. Had God had anything to do with her turning up now? To make him see things differently? Give him back some hope? When she was around, he thought he saw things better. More clearly. What he had to do. Had that been the plan? Or was that because she (_loved him_) was the one person he could talk to … and trust that did that for him?

Or were the two things ultimately the same? Another game of manipulating him and his brother into playing their parts to whatever end, using emotions he didn't understand to drive him along?

Ellie stirred beside him, opening her eyes and looking up into his. "Hey."

"Hey." He bent his head to kiss her. "I've been waiting for you to wake up."

She smiled lazily, her fingers trailing suggestively down his body. "Getting hungry? Or …"

"Both," he admitted. "But food first."

He leaned over to pick up the Room Service menu from the nightstand. "What do you feel like?"

"Something substantial." She glanced at him from under her lashes. "Steak. I think I'll need the energy."

"Damned straight."

* * *

><p>Dean woke abruptly, the brightly-lit clock to his left showing it was just past one a.m., his body tensing as he felt the unfamiliar warmth and weight over one side, relaxing a fraction of a second later when memory told him where he was.<p>

His arm slid a little closer around the woman curled against him, and she made a small noise, her cheek shifting a little in the hollow of his shoulder. The room was just too dark to make out detail, the clock's light showing him the curve of her brow, the dark shadow of her hair. He pulled in a deep breath, wondering what'd woken him.

"Something?" Ellie whispered and he smiled, one side of his mouth lifting a little higher than the other. He had a feeling she'd woken a second after him, feeling the change.

"Don't think so," he told her, his voice equally low. "Go back to sleep."

Her exhale brushed over his skin and he closed his eyes, telling himself it was just a breath, pretending to himself he hadn't felt it as intimately as a kiss.

The hell was going on with him, he thought, squirming slightly with unease.

Ellie looked up, propping herself on her elbow. "What's wrong?"

"Nothing."

She didn't say anything and he huffed out an irritable breath after a couple of minutes of the silence.

"When do you have to take off?"

"A couple of days," she said, settling herself against him again, her arm light over his ribs. "Marcus and Twist are in Delaware, said they were checking out a string of disappearances in Millsboro."

He heard a slight hesitation, then she said quietly, "You and Sam could come with?"

Delaware, he thought. They could tag along. Maybe they'd be less visible with other hunters. "What kind of disappearances?"

"Weird ones," Ellie told him, the hint of nervousness gone from her voice. "Each one preceded by hundreds of lightning strikes out of clear skies."

He ran that information through his experience and the memorised recall of his father's journal, brows drawing together as both came up blank.

"Haven't heard of that," he admitted, turning his head to look at her. "Thought you said you were, uh, being social?"

"I was being social," she countered. "They were just filling me in on what they were doing. I would guess Sam will've picked it up anyway."

"Yeah."

* * *

><p>Dean's phone rang at seven. He woke on the first intrusive note, stretching as he sat up and looked around for it.<p>

"Nightstand," Ellie said, pulling on a pair of jeans and a long-sleeved shirt beside the window. He turned his head to look and there it was.

"Sam, yeah I'm still here," he answered the phone through a yawn and watched her dressing appreciatively. "What you got?"

He listened, brows knitting as he slid over to the edge of the bed and picked up his jeans from the floor. Ellie went through the doors to the living area of the suite. Dragging them on one-handed, he said, "What kind of omens?"

"Major ones," Sam's voice sounded thin through the phone's speaker. "Either big-time angel or big-time demon. They're not staying put, they're – they look like they're spreading out."

"Where?" Sam told him and his scowl deepened. That was only the next town over.

"Dean, we gotta get outta here," Sam said. "We can't wait around for –"

"Way ahead of you, man, we're heading to Delaware. I'll be there in ten, alright?" He closed the phone and walked out the living room, buttoning his fly as he called out to Ellie.

" Sam's tracked some major omens to –" He stopped halfway into the room.

Ellie stood between the kitchenette and the window. A few feet from her, Raphael stood facing her, the archangel wearing the small town mechanic he'd last seen him in. He slowly turned his head to look at Dean, and a smile stretched his mouth, sharklike and chilling.

"So. You were lying," Raphael said, glancing back to Ellie. "Uriel was right. You are a meddler, a wildcard. But you won't be for much longer."

Dean looked from the archangel to Ellie. She was completely still, her face expressionless and calm, but he could see the tension in her body. He didn't know if she was being held in place by the angel's power or not.

"Raphael, no hard feelings about the oil, I hope." He took a few steps closer to Ellie.

"Castiel will pay for that." He looked over his shoulder at Dean. "You, I can't touch. At least … not yet."

Turning back to Ellie, he raised his hand, the palm held outward. "But you, you have meddled in our business enough."

"NO!" Dean yelled, accelerating toward them.

The archangel didn't look at him, didn't flinch or take his attention off the woman in front of him. Dean felt himself lifted, straight up into the air, and flung to the other end of the long room. He hit the wall with a crash, cracking through the plaster and bringing down a painting as he fell to the floor.

"Dean! Get out! Get Sam and get out of here!" Ellie screamed as the arch's raised hand began to glow with a fierce blue-white light.

Struggling to his feet, kicking the plaster and painting aside, Dean shook his head.

"No! This is not fucking happening! Ellie –!"

Not a fucking archangel. _No._ Not now. Not _now_. There was a flash through the room as the light doubled in power and he froze mid-stride, staring in disbelief as Ellie was held in the centre of that beam, the colour bleached from her hair, her face, as the light kept strengthening. He could barely see her anymore.

"Castiel!" Her voice rang out strongly over a high-pitched whine that seemed to be filling the room.

"Castiel cannot help you," Raphael sneered at her.

"No, but he _will_ take Dean far beyond your reach," she spat back at him.

Castiel appeared behind Raphael an instant later. He looked from the archangel to Ellie, spinning around as Dean grabbed his arm.

"Stop him!"

The light was too bright already and the angel looked at Ellie. Her mouth was moving but neither could hear any sound as the contents of the room began to shake and rattle in their places, glass smashing and shattering, the building itself starting to resonate at the frequency of the argentine brilliance, rumbling and creaking as the light spread out, intensifying, sucking the colour from everything it touched.

Castiel nodded once. He turned to Dean and gripped his shoulder. Dean understood a second too late what Cas was doing.

* * *

><p>They stood together, down on the street in front of the Impala.<p>

"The hell are you _doing_!? You've got to stop him, Cas!" Dean yelled at him, anguish and disbelief and shock warring in his mind, pulling free of the angel's grip.

It was an _archangel_; the thought kept cycling through him. Raphael. Who'd disintegrated Cas. Who'd levelled a gas station. _She was dead, she must already be dead, no one could survive it_. The thought was killing him. _She couldn't be dead, he'd only just found her, they belonged together, she couldn't be dead, he needed her, he couldn't keep losing everyone he needed_.

Above them, the windows of the suite glowed with the light of the archangel, it speared out in every direction, pulsing as the brightness kept increasing. Glass showered them as the exterior windows hummed and whined, exploding along both sides of the building and Dean and Castiel ducked behind the car as the fragments crashed and splintered on the pavement around them.

"Cas, c'mon, _HELP ME!_"

"Dean, no –"

The entire outside wall of the hotel room blew out, sending debris down to the street. The light was too bright to look at, even with his head ducked and his arm over his eyes, Dean could see only white, everywhere he looked. The whine notched up, drilling into Dean's ears, oscillating in the spaces of his skull.

"Get in the car, Dean!" Cas snapped. "We won't have much time. We have to get you and Sam out of here!"

"No!" Dean ground his teeth together, jaw muscle flexing as he tried to fight against the pain flooding his head. "No, we gotta get her!"

"Dean, she's gone," Cas grated at him. "Don't waste the time she gave us."

He pulled the door open, pushing Dean inside, and sliding in after him. Touching the steering column, the engine roared to life. Dean looked at the wheel blankly, setting his hands on it, feet finding the pedals without thought. He pulled out automatically as the light died behind them.

* * *

><p>"Get whatever you need, you have to get going."<p>

Castiel burst through the door to the motel room, and Sam looked up, mouth falling open at the angel.

"Raphael will not take long to search the town."

Sam thrust the laptop into the bag, and tossed Dean's bag to Castiel. He picked up his own, his eyes sweeping the room briefly to make sure he hadn't forgotten anything. It was clean.

Following Cas out to the car, he wrenched open the rear door and tossed the bags into the back, slamming the door shut and sliding into the front. A glance at his brother told him whatever had gone on, it'd been bad. Dean's face was hard and his gaze was fixed ahead. Sam looked around, realising the angel had disappeared.

Dean pulled out and pointed the car north, smoke pouring from the tyres as he hit the accelerator and dropped the clutch.

"Dean?"

Watching him as he made a left and a right, Sam felt his heart sink. Dean hadn't so much as glanced at him, his expression stony and unchanged and his hands white-knuckled on the wheel. He turned to look through the windshield, letting the silence grow between them.

He'd seen his brother like this just a couple of times before. When they'd been much younger, he'd caught a glimpse of his brother's face in the rearview mirror wearing the same expression. He'd been lying in the backseat, consciousness coming and going, blood filling his lungs. The second time had been the drive to Bobby's, after their father had been taken by Meg. Dean was operating on automatic pilot right now, and to ask questions would just strip that protection from him.

Whatever it was, he thought, Ellie wasn't with them. He found he wasn't sure he wanted to hear what'd happened to her – to make his brother look like this. Nothing good. He turned his head to stare out into the darkness as the car sped along the black road, and resigned himself to waiting.

* * *

><p>Dean drove for four hours before lack of sleep started to affect him. He'd headed north at first, then dog-legged west. For the last hour they'd been driving through farmland.<p>

He pulled over when he saw the house, old and grey, abandoned. He had to sleep. His mind and emotions were numb, but he couldn't count on that lasting. When he was forced to accept what had happened, he wanted to be somewhere remote.

Sam's phone rang as they entered the house, relieved to find it dusty but dry. Dean carried his duffel and the gear bag into the first room he came to.

"Cas? Where are you?" Sam stopped in the hallway. "We're in an abandoned farmhouse, off a local highway, 30. About six miles from Amboy. In Minnesota –"

He turned around and Castiel stood behind him, closing his phone. "Where's Dean?"

Sam gestured to the open door to the right. "Cas, what happened?"

Castiel looked at Sam for a moment. "Raphael showed up and attempted to smite Ellie."

"Attempted?" Sam's brow wrinkled. "She's alive?"

"Yes." The angel looked at the doorway. "I have to talk to Dean."

"I don't know that he'll hear you right now." Sam followed his gaze. "He hasn't said anything."

"He'll want to hear what I have to say." Castiel walked through the door.

* * *

><p>"Dean."<p>

Dean sat on an ancient sofa, its cushions torn, the stuffing falling out. He stared straight ahead of him, his eyes hooded and dark and his body locked in tension. He couldn't make himself believe she was gone. He couldn't pretend to himself that she wasn't. He was stuck in limbo between the two thoughts, unable to move.

Give him what he wanted, then take it away. It'd happened before. Somewhere, inside, down deep, there was screaming. Distant right now. But getting closer.

He heard the scrape of a shoe in the doorway.

"Ellie's alive," Castiel said bluntly. He thought it would be the least painful way to begin.

Dean slowly turned toward him, focussing on the angel. "I was there, Cas. You tellin' me she survived Raphael's death ray? You didn't."

The angel bowed his head in acknowledgement. "I can't explain it, I don't know how it happened, but yes, that's what I'm telling you. She did. I spoke to her twenty minutes ago."

He took a step backward as Dean lurched to his feet. "Let's go."

"No."

"Wha-no? _No?_ Why the hell not!?"

'I can't." Castiel held up his hands pacifically at Dean's expression. "I'm sorry, it's her idea but I happen to agree. Raphael found you through her. She won't put you in that danger again."

"That's a load of crap. You can protect her; you can hide her, you can put the sigils on her, like you did us." He scowled at the angel. "Don't do this, man!"

"No. I tried to ward her, but it didn't work." Cas shook his head. "She was – protected – somehow – against Raphael's attack – and she has no part in destiny's path, she's not recorded in the lines. Maybe that's why. I don't know." He looked at Dean sympathetically. "Dean, she was very clear about it. She wanted you to know that she was alive. She – uh – well, she said to tell you she loves you. But she won't see you – or Sam. Not while Heaven is hunting you."

Dean's hands curled into fists by his side as he tried to keep his voice even. "Cas, I don't give a fuck about Heaven. I don't care what she told you. I'm _asking_ you – Cas, I'm _begging_ you – to take me there."

Castiel shook his head again. "No. I think she's right, Dean. Unwarded, unprotected, she is too easily seen. It would be a simple matter for Michael to find you, for Raphael to find you, if you're with her. You'll be safer - she'll be safer - if you're apart."

"Goddamn you."

"Very likely." The angel sighed.

* * *

><p><strong>END<strong>

_**AN:**__ Two stories follow this one, overlapping across the year Dean spends with Lisa and Ben and the year that follows Sam's raising from Hell, _**Love Bleeds**_ and _**Two Out of Three Ain't Bad**_. Both are seen through Dean's perspective. Ellie returns to Dean's life in _The Beat of Black Wings_, set at the beginning of S7._


End file.
